Simulating performance in unconscious plagiarism

Studies of unconscious plagiarism have reported that people mistakenly include a partner’s responses when trying to recall their own (recall-own task) and include own responses when trying to recall their partner’s (recall-partner task). In a simulation, we tested if participants’ memory performance at test, including source errors, can be explained by participants simply guessing items that come easily to mind. We show that guessing alone cannot account for the pattern of data participants show at test. Modifying the simulation by including memory for self-generated items allows us to replicate the pattern of responding in the recall-own but not the recall-partner task, even when we assume that participants in the recall-partner task strategically withhold more fluent items from report. This suggests that judgements of items’ memory strength alone cannot explain performance in the unconscious plagiarism paradigm.