Recognition and order information in working memory for visual textures

Three experiments examined connections between old/new item recognition and memory for temporal order information. With series of compound gratings as study and probe items, subjects made temporal order judgments (Experiments 1 and 2) by identifying the serial position of the study item that matched the probe, or recognition judgments (Experiment 3) by judging whether the probe had or had not been presented in the preceding study series. About 25% of correct recognitions were accompanied by incorrect temporal order identification. These misidentifications of item order were attributable to two factors: perceptual similarity of the wrongly identified study item to the probe, and the temporal proximity between those two items. Recognition zROC functions, derived from confidence ratings, were approximately linear with a slope >1.0. Incorporating a summed similarity account of recognition into signal detection theory suggests that the variance of summed similarities on lure trials is greater than on target trials.