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Acta Psychologica 127 (2008) 211–221

Interfering with remembering and knowing:Effects of divided attention at retrieval

Erin I. Skinner *, Myra A. Fernandes

Department of Psychology, 200 University Ave. W., University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1

Received 8 November 2006; received in revised form 17 April 2007; accepted 9 May 2007Available online 27 June 2007

Abstract

A Remember–Know paradigm was used to examine the cognitive resource requirements of recollection and familiarity memory pro-cesses at retrieval. Younger and older adults studied a list of words, and in a later auditory recognition test indicated whether each wordwas Remembered, Known, or New. Retrieval was performed under full or divided attention (DA) conditions, with either a digit task tonumbers, or an animacy task to words, presented visually. Younger and older adults showed an increase in false Remember responsesduring both DA conditions, indicating a general effect of attention on illusory recollection. Both age groups also showed decreased accu-racy in Know responses, but only during the word-based DA condition, indicating a material-specific effect on familiarity. Aging wasassociated with decreased accuracy in Remember, but not Know, responses, and with increased latency in distracting task responsesunder DA conditions. Results suggest that avoiding false recollective responses during retrieval requires attentional resources, whereasaccurate familiarity responses require the reactivation of content-specific representations.� 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

PsycINFO: 2343

Keywords: Memory; Divided attention; Recollection; Familiarity; Age

1. Introduction

According to dual process models, there are two ways inwhich information can be recognized, referred to as ‘‘Rec-ollection’’ and ‘‘Familiarity’’ (Gardiner, 1988; Jacoby,1991; Mandler, 1980). Recollection refers to the effortfulretrieval of detailed (e.g., contextual) information aboutindividual personal episodes, whereas familiarity is thoughtof as an unspecific sense of having previously encountereda given event. The literature describes recollection as amore controlled and analytic process than familiarity(Jacoby, 1991; Kelley & Jacoby, 1998). For example, shal-lower levels of processing (Gregg & Gardiner, 1994; Raja-ram, 1993) and divided attention at study (Gardiner,

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doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2007.05.001

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 519 888 4567x37776; fax: +1 519 7468631.

E-mail address: eiskinne@watarts.uwaterloo.ca (E.I. Skinner).

Gregg, Mashru, & Thaman, 2001; Gardiner & Parkin,1990; Yonelinas, 2001) decrease recollection to a greaterextent than familiarity. These findings have led researchersto conceptualize recollection as a more attention-demand-ing process than familiarity. In contrast, familiarity is gen-erally described as an increase in an item’s processingfluency (Johnston, Dark, & Jacoby, 1985; Kelley & Jacoby,1998), or quantitative memory strength (Yonelinas, 1994).For example, changing the perceptual characteristics ofword stimuli at test decreases familiarity-based processingwhile leaving recollection unaffected (Rajaram, 1993; Raja-ram & Geraci, 2000).

In the present study we used the divided attention (DA)technique to further characterize the cognitive resourcesrequired to perform recollection- and familiarity-basedmemory recognition. We tested the hypothesis that recol-lection requires attentional resources during retrieval,whereas familiarity depends on resources involved in

212 E.I. Skinner, M.A. Fernandes / Acta Psychologica 127 (2008) 211–221

accessing content-specific memory representations. Weexamined how performance on a Remember–Know mem-ory test1 was affected, in younger and older adults, bytwo different DA conditions at retrieval. While previouswork has considered the role of attention during encoding,no study to date has examined how divided attention atretrieval affects recollection and familiarity in a Remem-ber–Know paradigm.

The DA technique has been widely used to measure theresources and component-processes required to perform acognitive task. With respect to memory, previous researchshows that when attention is divided during encoding, sub-sequent memory performance is largely disrupted. Dividingattention during retrieval, in contrast, has only a small, ornon-significant effect on memory (Baddeley, Lewis,Eldridge, & Thompson, 1984; Craik, Govoni, Naveh-Ben-jamin, & Anderson, 1996), leading some researchers to sug-gest that encoding is a more attention-demanding processthan retrieval (Naveh-Benjamin, Craik, Guez, & Dori,1998). Nonetheless, other work has shown that, under cer-tain circumstances, DA at retrieval can produce large dis-ruptions to memory. These exceptions shed light on thecomponents of memory retrieval that can be affected byDA conditions during retrieval.

The first exception is when the memory test requirescontrolled processing at retrieval, such as organizationalor source memory judgments. Large deficits in memoryfrom DA are observed when the test requires recall fromcategorized word lists (Moscovitch, 1994; Park, Smith,Dudley, & Lafronza, 1989), list discriminations (Jacoby,1991), or involves release from proactive inhibition (Mos-covitch, 1989, 1994). These studies indicate that attentionalresources are required during retrieval when the memorytest can benefit from organizational strategies, or involvesre-creation of the contextual information tied to item mem-ory. Hicks and Marsh (2000) similarly argued that retrievalwill be disrupted by DA only if control processes are usedduring retrieval. They found that memory for words readintact during encoding were unaffected by DA at retrieval,but the hit rate for words studied as anagrams decreasedunder DA conditions. The authors argued that the wordsread intact were more shallowly processed, and conse-quently, retrieved by relatively automatic familiarity pro-cesses unaffected by DA at retrieval. In contrast, wordsgenerated from anagrams were believed to be more deeplyprocessed at encoding and subsequently retrieved usingmore recollective-based recognition processes, making the

1 The Remember–Know paradigm was developed in order to studyrecollective and familiarity-based memory processes (Tulving, 1983, 1985).During a recognition memory test, participants are asked to make a‘‘Remember’’ (R) response if they recollect specific information about theitem from the study phase, a ‘‘Know’’ (K) response if the item is familiarin the absence of a specific recollection of the study episode, or a ‘‘New’’(N) response if the item is not believed to be from the study list. In general,R responses are believed to reflect recollective memory processes, whereasK responses align more with familiarity-based recognition processes(Yonelinas, 2001; Yonelinas & Jacoby, 1995).

retrieval of these items more susceptible to the effects ofDA. However, since the authors did not directly test recol-lection and familiarity during their memory test, it is diffi-cult to determine whether the effect of DA on wordsgenerated from anagrams occurred because of a changein recollection per se, or because of a change in some otherretrieval mechanism, such as strategy-use. In addition,Hicks and Marsh found that false alarm rate increasedunder DA conditions, raising the possibility that DA mayaffect control processes used to monitor the validity ofthe contents of memory. It is possible that the increase infalse alarms occurred selectively for items that made useof recollective-based processing (anagram word recogni-tion); however, since both generate and read items weretested in the same recognition test, this hypothesis couldnot be specifically examined.

Gardiner, Gregg, and Karayianni (2006) also consideredhow conscious awareness, or available resources, at encod-ing and retrieval affect recollection and familiarity. Theyexamined how Remember and Know responses were influ-enced by perceptual effects of study–test congruence whenattention was divided during encoding, and whether thesewere influenced by a speeded responding manipulation(intended to reduce available conscious resources) duringretrieval. They found that the perceptual effects in remem-bering and knowing depended more on available consciousresources at encoding than retrieval. However, other stud-ies suggest that conscious resources are also critical for rec-ollection at retrieval, as recollective responding declinesunder speeded response conditions, though familiarity isunaffected (Benjamin & Craik, 2001; Toth, 1996; Yonelinas& Jacoby, 1994, 1995). These later findings correspondwith those from process-dissociation studies, which showthat DA at retrieval affects recollection more than familiar-ity (Dodson & Johnson, 1996; Gruppuso, Lindsay, & Kel-ley, 1997; Jacoby, 1991; Mulligan & Hirshman, 1997). Inthe current study, we wished to determine whether DA atretrieval would disrupt recollective, and not familiarity,processing measured by a Remember–Know paradigm,and we performed separate analyses on hits, false alarms,and corrected recognition to examine the effects of DA atretrieval on both veridical and false recognition.

The second exception in which DA at retrieval disruptsmemory performance is when the memory and distractingtask use similar material. Fernandes and Moscovitch(2000, 2002, 2003) found that recall of a list of unrelatedwords was disrupted when participants concurrently per-formed a word-based distracting task, but not when theyperformed a digit- or picture-based distracting task. Theysuggest that the locus of memory interference in their stud-ies lies in reactivation of content representations of the itemmemory, rather than competition for general attentionalresources.

In the present study, we tested whether this material-specific interference effect would act selectively on familiar-ity-based processing. It has been suggested that familiarityinvolves responding to the overall similarity of an item

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across study and test condition, in a global matching pro-cess (Gillund & Shiffrin, 1984; Hintzman & Curran, 1994),and work has shown that knowing is more sensitive to vari-ables that affect the perceptual processing fluency of items,than is remembering. For example, Rajaram (1993) showedthat presentation of a test word, preceded by an identicalmasked test prime, affected knowing and not remembering,and Dewhurst and Hitch (1997) found that performing anauditory lexical decision task between the study and testphase of an auditory recognition memory task had a detri-mental effect on accuracy of knowing, when lures in therecognition test were created from the non-words in thepreceding lexical decision task. These studies suggest thatknowing is particularly sensitive to manipulations thatinterfere with re-creation of the representational contentof memory. This led us to predict that manipulations ofattention at retrieval could disrupt familiarity, but onlywhen the distracter task uses similar material as the mem-ory task, or when there is competition for a common rep-resentational system during dual-task conditions.

The cognitive requirements of recollection and familiar-ity have also been examined through work with olderadults. It has been suggested that older adults have lesseffective attentional processes, which results in poorerdetection, discrimination, and selection of task-relevantstimuli, and increased susceptibility to interference (Hasher& Zacks, 1988; McDowd & Shaw, 2000). Psychologistsoften characterize the aging process as a loss of availablegeneral attentional resources as a consequence of changesin brain structures, especially in the frontal lobes, withadvancing age. Older adults often show both a decreasein the amount of recollective memories they experienceand a tendency to report higher false recollective memories(Bunce, 2003; Perfect & Dasgupta, 1997; Prull, Dawes,Martin, Rosenberg, & Light, 2006). In contrast, familiarityshows either no or a less pronounced decrease with advanc-ing age (Norman & Schacter, 1997; Perfect, Williams, &Anderton-Brown, 1995). As recollection is believed to bea more attention-demanding process than familiarity, thedecline in recollection noted with advancing age has beenlinked to this population’s reduced levels of efficient pro-cessing on attention-demanding tasks (Parkin & Walker,1992; Davidson & Glisky, 2002). In comparison, familiar-ity is believed to involve more representational aspects ofcognitive function, which are relatively preserved withaging (Park, 2000; Salthouse, 1991; Wingfield & Stine-Morrow, 2000).

In the current study we examined how reduced levels ofattentional resources, brought on by an experimentalmanipulation (DA), and by a participant variable (aging),affect recollection and familiarity. We also tested whetherthe material-specific interference effect from DA at retrie-val, reported by Fernandes and Moscovitch (2000, 2002,2003), would act selectively on familiarity-based process-ing. Younger and older adults performed a Remember–Know memory test under full attention (FA) or two DAconditions, with either a number- or word-based distracter

task. In line with previous work (Fernandes & Moscovitch,2000, 2002), we expected overall recognition performanceto be disrupted when retrieval was performed concurrentlywith a word-based distracting task (DA-word) but not witha digit-based distracting task (DA-digit), and that the mag-nitude of this disruption would be similar in younger andolder adults (Fernandes & Moscovitch, 2003). Also, in linewith previous work (Anderson, Craik, & Naveh-Benjamin,1998; Naveh-Benjamin et al., 1998), we expected that coststo distracter task performance, during both DA conditions,would be greater in older, as compared to younger, adults.

To the extent that recollection requires attentionalresources, R responses should be reduced during either ofour DA conditions, as both distracting tasks would reducethe amount of available attentional resources to devote tothe task. We refer to this as a general effect of DA on rec-ollection. In addition, since older adults have fewer avail-able attentional resources than younger adults, thisdisruption should be greater in older adults, as their limitedresources are further reduced by the DA conditions. Wealso tested the hypothesis that familiarity would be partic-ularly disrupted in the DA-word condition, as this distract-ing task would interfere with re-creation of therepresentational content of memory (Fernandes & Mos-covitch, 2000, 2002, 2003), critical to the familiarity pro-cess. We refer to this as a material-specific effect of DAon familiarity. Since representational aspects of cognitivefunction are preserved with aging, the magnitude of disrup-tion to familiarity should be similar in younger and olderadults.

2. Method

2.1. Participants

Sixty people took part in the experiment. Thirty healthyundergraduate students from the University of Waterlooreceived course credit and 30 older adults recruited fromthe Waterloo Research Aging Pool (WRAP) at the Univer-sity of Waterloo received token monetary remuneration forparticipating in the study. The WRAP pool is a database ofhealthy seniors in the Kitchener–Waterloo area recruitedby means of newspaper ads, flyers in community centers,and through local television segments featuring researchat the University of Waterloo. The mean age was 20.20(SD = 2.19) for the younger adults and 72.60 (SD = 7.05)for the older adults. All participants were fluent Englishspeakers, and had normal or corrected-to-normal hearingand vision. The mean number of years of education was15.30 (SD = 2.04) and 14.65 (SD = 2.14) for the youngerand older adult groups, respectively, which did not signifi-cantly differ. The National Adult Reading Test – Revised(NART-R) was also administered to allow an estimate ofFull Scale IQ (FSIQ), based on number of errors in pro-nunciation during vocabulary reading (Blair & Spreen,1989; Nelson, 1982). Younger and older adults had meanFSIQ estimates of 108.52 (SD = 6.85) and 114.80

2 We conducted an earlier experiment in which the two distracting taskswere (1) the same word-based distracter task described in this study, and(2) odd-digit identification of numbers, with 30 younger and 30 olderadults. The pattern of performance was identical to that reported in thecurrent study. We chose to report results using the digit-addition distractertask because this is a more complex task than the odd-digit-identificationone, requiring a transformation of the items prior to responding. Wereasoned that such a task is more analogous to the word-based distractertask in which participants need to first read the word, then access itssemantic meaning, prior to making a response.

3 Participants were told that they would hear some new and some oldwords, and were asked to make one of these three responses. Participantswere instructed to say ‘‘N’’ for New if they believed that the word was notfrom the study list. If they thought the word was from the study list,however, they had two options, ‘‘R’’ or ‘‘K’’. They were told to report‘‘R’’ for Remember if the word was ‘‘old’’ and they could recall specificdetails associating that word with the study episode. They were givenexamples of such details: they may remember how the word sounded, thetemporal order, or an image, thought, or feeling they had associated withthe word during study. These contextual details meant they had a specificrecollection of that word. If however, the word was ‘‘old’’ but did not havethese specific associations with the study episode, they were asked to say‘‘K’’ for Know. They were also given the example of a K memory toclarify this type of memory response: meeting someone on the street thatthey knew they had met before, but not being able to determine the specificinstance in which they had met them. They were told that this same kindof experience can happen for the words – they may know that they hadheard the word previously, but not recall the specific instance in whichthey had heard it. Participants were then asked if they understood thedistinction between Remember and Know responses and, after thepractice session, participants were asked to give the details of the memoryaccompanying a Remember and Know response, in order to ensure thatthey understood the difference between the responses, and were notresponding on the basis of response confidence.

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(SD = 6.54), respectively, which differed significantly,t(58) = 3.62, p < .05. The Trail-Making test was alsoadministered to establish an estimate of executive function-ing (Reitan & Wolfson, 1985), believed to be reduced in theolder adult group. The mean time to complete Trails A was19.50 s (SD = 5.14) and 33.19 s (SD = 8.86) in younger andolder adults, respectively, which differed significantly,t(58) = �7.32, p < .001. Time to complete Trails B was33.43 s (SD = 10.75) and 67.79 s (SD = 20.29) for youngerand older adults, which also differed significantly,t(58) = �8.20, p < .001. These means are in the normalrange for each age group (Spreen & Strauss, 1998), andare in line with the expected deficit in executive functioningin older adults. Thus, we consider our sample of olderadults to be representative of the general aging population.In addition, older adults were administered the Mini-Men-tal State Exam (MMSE; Folstein, Folstein, & McHugh,1975) to screen for gross neurological conditions. All hadMMSE scores of greater than 27/30 (M = 28.73,SD = 1.26), indicating that they were free from major cog-nitive and neurological impairments.

2.2. Materials

Word stimuli for the recognition and word-based dis-tracting tasks were medium to high frequency words cho-sen from Celex, a lexical database available on CD-ROM(Baayen, Piepenbrock, & Gulikers, 1995). Words were spo-ken by author MF in a sound proof booth and recordedinto a .wav file using SoundDesigner II software (PaloAlto, California). For the memory task, three study listswere created by randomly choosing 50 words for each list,from a pool of 470 unrelated common nouns. Recognitiontest lists were then created by randomly choosing 30 wordsfrom the study list and an additional 20 words (to serve aslures) from the pool. The three study and correspondingtest lists were equated on letter length (M = 5.69,SD = 1.67), utterance length (M = .89, SD = .19), andword frequency (M = 67.44, SD = 113.04), and were coun-ter-balanced across conditions and participants.

A 50- and 100-word list was created for the word-baseddistracter in the single- and DA-word conditions, respec-tively (see Procedure). Lists consisted of words with a meanof six letters (SD = 1.69), representing living (e.g., kitten)and man-made (e.g., pencil) objects. Another 50-word listwas created for use in the auditory continuous reactiontime (CRT) task (see Procedure). The three word lists wereequated on word frequency (M = 36.31, SD = 63.51), andeach list was created to contain half living and half man-made objects.

Fifty two-digit numbers for the digit-based distractertask in the single-digit condition and 100 two-digit num-bers for the DA-digit condition (see Procedure) were used.Each two-digit number was presented flanked by two X’son either side (e.g., XX47XX), so that the visual displayconsisted of six items, as in the word-based distracting task.Participants were required to add the two digits together,

and make a key-press if the two numbers added to a num-ber greater than 10. The test lists were made such that halfof the digit combinations required a response.2 An addi-tional 50-item list was created for use during the CRT task.

2.3. Procedure

Stimulus presentation and response recording were con-trolled by an IBM PC, using E-prime v.1.1 software (Psy-chology Software Tools Inc., Pittsburg, PA). Participantswere tested individually, and completed the experiment inapproximately one hour. All participants began by per-forming the NART-revised and Trail Making Test, andolder adults were also administered the MMSE. Partici-pants were then given a short practice block (10–20 itemsper condition) of all experimental tasks. During the prac-tice session, participants were instructed with respect tohow to properly report Remember, Know, and Newresponses.3 Following practice, the five task conditionswere administered, with presentation order counter-bal-anced across participants according to a Latin-squaredesign.

For the digit- and word-based distracting tasks, partici-pants indicated, via a key-press, every time the two digitsadded to a number greater than 10, or a word representinga man-made object, appeared on the computer screen,depending on the distracting task. Participants performed

E.I. Skinner, M.A. Fernandes / Acta Psychologica 127 (2008) 211–221 215

each task alone (single-digit or single-word conditions) andwith the memory task (DA-digit or DA-word conditions),with items presented at a rate of one every 2 s for younger,and one every 2.5 s for older adults.4

During the study phase for each memory condition, par-ticipants were told to listen to a list of words and to try tomemorize these for a later memory test; hence encodingwas always performed with full attention. Study lists werepresented auditorily via computer speakers at a rate ofone word every two seconds, and the volume of word pre-sentation was adjusted during the practice phase of theexperiment such that participant could hear the wordsclearly without straining their hearing. After study, partic-ipants counted backwards by threes from a number pre-sented visually on the computer screen for 30 s, in orderto eliminate recency effects (as in Craik et al., 1996). Duringthe retrieval phase, participants heard words auditorily,and were asked to make one of three verbal responses:(1) say ‘‘R’’ for Remember, (2) say ‘‘K’’ for Know, or (3)say ‘‘N’’ for ‘‘New’’. Responses were recorded manuallyby the experimenter. Younger adults were given 4 s andolder adults 5 s to make a response to each word in the rec-ognition test.4 For the DA conditions, two distracting taskitems were presented for each word presented in the recog-nition task, with onset of the first distracting task itemsimultaneous with that for the recognition task word, thusrequiring participants to make two digit or animacy deci-sions for every memory response. The importance of plac-ing 50% of their effort on the recognition task and 50% oftheir effort on the distracting task was emphasized prior toeach DA condition.

2.4. Comparing difficulty of the distracting tasks

If the digit and word distracting tasks differ with respectto resource requirements, this could contribute to any dif-ferences observed in memory interference from each DAcondition. In order to compare resource demands of eachdistracter task, we had participants perform the word-and digit-based task concurrently with an auditory contin-uous reaction time (CRT) task (as in Fernandes & Moscov-itch, 2000). Participants were instructed to identifycomputer-generated tones either alone (single-task condi-

4 Since age-related slowing of processing speed might affect participant’sability to respond to the memory and distracting tasks, we adjusted thepresentation rates for the auditory recognition and distracting task inyounger and older adults based on pilot testing in three younger and fourolder adults. Pilot data from two older and three younger subjects showedthat when participants were required to make a recognition decision towords heard every 4 s, and distracting task items every 2 s, overallrecognition accuracy under FA conditions was 42% in older adults, ascompared to 60% in the younger adults. We tested an additional two olderadult pilot participants, who heard a word every 5 s, and distracting taskitems presented every 2.5 s, and found that accuracy in the FA conditionincreased to 57%, roughly equivalent to the younger adults, thus in ourstudy we used these longer presentation durations for the older adultgroup.

tion) or in combination with the digit- or word-based dis-tracting task (dual-task conditions) for 100 s, with taskorder counterbalanced. For both distracting tasks, itemswere presented once every 2 s. This procedure was con-ducted only in the young adult sample, as seniors haveextreme difficulty discriminating tones due to normal sen-sory loss with increasing age (Ostoff, McDonald, Schnei-der, & Alain, 2003). The response time (RT) and numberof correct responses on the auditory CRT task wererecorded and analyzed as a means of gauging how demand-ing each distracting task was, with longer RTs indicatinggreater resource demands.

3. Results

3.1. Memory task performance

Our results are separated into three sections. We ana-lyzed overall recognition, Remember, and Know responsesseparately. Since there is evidence that hits and false alarmsmay show different effects from DA and age (Hicks &Marsh, 2000; Perfect et al., 1995), we analyzed hit rate(out of 30), false alarm rate (out of 20), and recognitionaccuracy (hit rate � false alarm rate) for each response sep-arately. Data were always analyzed in a three (atten-tion) · 2 (age group) · 5 (task order) analysis of variance(ANOVA), with the first variable being within participantsand the other variables being between participant manipu-lations. Means for each response, condition, and age groupare presented in Table 1.

3.1.1. Overall recognition

The pattern of results was similar for overall hits, overallfalse alarms, and overall accuracy, thus only statistics relat-ing to the last measure are reported. There was a maineffect of attention, F(2, 100) = 6.93, MSE = .18, g2 = .12,p < .005, with poorer overall recognition in the DA-wordthan in both the FA, F(1, 50) = 11.91, MSE = .70,g2 = .19, p = .001, and DA-digit conditions,F(1, 50) = 4.08, MSE = .24, g2 = .08, p < .05. Recognitionin the FA and DA-digit conditions did not differ signifi-cantly, F(1,50) = 3.32. There was a main effect of agegroup, F(1, 50) = 13.44, MSE = .39, g2 = .21, p < .001,with older showing poorer accuracy than younger adults.There was no attention · age group interaction.

3.1.2. Remember responsesAnalysis of the R hit rate and Recollection accuracy

showed no effects of attention or age group, and no inter-action. The R false alarm rate analysis showed a main effectof age group, F(1, 50) = 18.62, MSE = .22, g2 = .27,p < .001, with older adults producing more R false alarmsthan younger adults. There was also a main effect of atten-tion, F(2, 100) = 5.48, MSE = .05, g2 = .16, p < .02, withfewer R false alarms in the FA than in the DA-digit,F(1, 50) = 5.13, MSE = .07, g2 = .09, p < .05, and DA-word conditions, F(1,50) = 8.54, MSE = .20, g2 = .14,

Table 1Mean Remember and Know performance measures for younger and older adults (standard deviation in parentheses)

Measure Response and condition

Response Full attention Divided attention digit Divided attention word

Younger Older Younger Older Younger Older

Overall accuracy (hit rate � false alarm rate) .62 (.19) .46 (.24) 59 (.24) .41 (.19) .49 (.29) 36 (.21)

Hit rate Remember .34 (.22) .38 (.29) .35 (.27) .42 (.33) .35 (.27) .41 (.32)Know .37 (.20) .32 (.29) .38 (.22) .31 (.28) .31 (.21) .27 (.28)

False alarm rate Remember .00 (.01) .11 (.13) .02 (.03) .16 (.18) .06 (.14) .17 (.19)Know .08 (.09) .14 (.13) .12 (.10) .16 (.17) .11 (.09) .15 (.16)

Accuracy (hit rate � false alarm rate) Remember .34 (.22) .27 (.27) .33 (.27) 26 (.26) 29 (.30) .24 (.27)Know .28 (.20) .18 (.29) .27 (.21) .16 (.17) .20 (.18) .12 (.21)

Independence model measures Recollection .34 (.22) .27 (.27) .33 (.27) .26 (.26) .29 (.30) .24 (.27)Familiarity .41 (.27) .17 (.35) .41 (.28) .19 (.20) .30 (.27) .12 (.24)

216 E.I. Skinner, M.A. Fernandes / Acta Psychologica 127 (2008) 211–221

p = .005. R false alarms in the DA-digit and DA-word con-ditions did not differ, F(1,50) = 1.81 (see Table 1).

3.1.3. Know responses

The analysis of K accuracy showed a main effect ofattention, F(2,100) = 5.64, MSE = .08, g2 = .10, p = .005,with poorer performance in the DA-word than in theFA, F(1,50) = 10.15, MSE = .32, g2 = .17, p = .002, andDA-digit conditions, F(1,50) = 4.75, MSE = .15, g2 = .09,p < .05, though the latter two conditions did not differ sig-nificantly. There was no effect of age group, nor an agegroup · attention interaction. The analysis for K hit rateand independence models of familiarity showed similarresults, except that the latter showed an additional maineffect of age group, F(1, 50) = 13.62, MSE = .59, g2 = .21,p = .001. Analysis of the K false alarm rate showed noeffect of age group or attention, and no interactions.

We remind the reader that the same pattern of interfer-ence reported above was found in an initial experiment2

using the word-based and a digit-identification distractertask, showing a general effect of attention on recollectionand a material-specific effect on familiarity, demonstratingthe replicability of our results.

3.2. Distracter task performance

Accuracy and response time (RT) for correct responsesin each distracter task were analyzed in a two (distractertask) · 2 (attention) · 2 (age group) · 5 (task order)ANOVA. The accuracy analysis showed a main effect ofdistracter task, F(1,50) = 20.82, MSE = .23, g2 = .29,p < .001, a main effect of attention, F(1,50) = 113.37,MSE = 1.52, g2 = .69, p < .001, a distracter task · agegroup interaction, F(1,50) = 8.71, MSE = .10, g2 = .25,p = .005, and a distracter task · attention interaction,F(1, 50) = 13.55, MSE = .13, g2 = .21, p = .001 (see Table2 for means). However, this was all accompanied by a threeway distracter task · attention · age group interaction,F(1, 50) = 4.5, MSE = .44, g2 = .08, p < .05. Planned com-parisons showed that although accuracy was lower in the

word-based than digit-based distracter task under dual-task conditions, t(59) = 2.43, accuracy on the distractertasks did not differ under single-task conditions,t(58) = 1.49. Planned comparisons also showed that therewere no age differences in accuracy for the single-digit,t(58) = .40, single-word, t(58) = �1.19, or dual-word,t(58) = �.57, conditions, but older adults showed signifi-cantly lower accuracy during the dual-digit condition thanyounger adults, t(58) = 3.24.

The RT analysis showed a main effect of age group,F(1,50) = 400.12, MSE = 30447997.44, g2 = .89, p < .001,a main effect of attention, F(1, 50) = 1264.40,MSE = 36122280.55, g2 = .96, p < .001, and an agegroup · attention interaction, F(1,50) = 668.78,MSE = 19106041.19, g2 = .93, p < .001, such that olderadults had slower RTs than younger adults, and this differ-ence was greater during dual-task than single-task condi-tions (see Table 2). Importantly, we did not find a maineffect of distracter task, nor any interactions with thisfactor.

3.3. Distracting task performed concurrently with theauditory CRT task

In order to examine the resources necessary to performthe distracting tasks, we examined CRT task performancealone, and in combination with each of the distractingtasks, in our young adult sample. The mean RT to identifycorrect tones and the number of tones correctly identifiedwas analyzed using a three (attention) · 2 (task order)ANOVA. Data from one participant were lost due to com-puter failure. Mean RT for the single CRT, dual-digitCRT, and dual-word CRT conditions was 724(SD = 139), 1110 (SD = 220), and 1140 (SD = 260),respectively. There was a main effect of attention,F(2,54) = 73.48, MSE = 1,545,808, g2 = .73, p < .001, withfaster RTs in the single CRT compared to the dual-digit,F(1,27) = 109.38, MSE = 4265987.85, g2 = .80, p < .001,and dual-word CRT conditions, F(1,27) = 101.43,MSE = 4981167.95, g2 = .79, p < .001. Importantly, RT

Table 2Mean accuracy and response time (in ms) for each distracter task, under single- and dual-task conditions for younger and older adults (standard deviationin parentheses)

Measure Condition

Single-digit DA-digit Single-word DA-word

Younger Older Younger Older Younger Older Younger Older

Accuracy .96 (.04) .96 (.04) .90 (.08) .79 (.17) .93 (.07) .96 (.08) .73 (.16) .75 (.16)Reaction time 652 (106) 834 (106) 863 (116) 2172 (309) 716 (93) 829 (136) 928 (104) 2172 (316)

E.I. Skinner, M.A. Fernandes / Acta Psychologica 127 (2008) 211–221 217

in the dual-digit CRT and dual-word CRT conditions didnot differ.

The mean number of tones correctly identified in the sin-gle CRT, dual-digit CRT, and dual-word CRT conditionswas 99 (SD = 21), 59 (SD = 16), and 57 (SD = 18) tones,respectively. There was a main effect of attention,F(2, 54) = 181.15, MSE = 90.48, g2 = .87, p < .001, with agreater number of tones identified in the single CRT thandual-digit F(1, 27) = 199.17, MSE = 200.08, g2 = .88,p < .001 and dual-word CRT conditions,F(1, 27) = 268.87, MSE = 229.93, g2 = .91, p < .001. Nota-bly, the means in the two dual-task conditions did not differsignificantly, F(1,27) = 2.15.

4. Discussion

The purpose of this study was to examine the resourcerequirements of recollection and familiarity-based recogni-tion during retrieval. First, we tested the hypothesis thatrecollection requires attentional resources during retrievalby examining how R responding was affected by manipula-tions of available attention during retrieval. In addition,since older adults are believed to have fewer availableattentional resources than younger adults, we comparedthe pattern of R responding across age groups, and inves-tigated whether DA in the older adults group had an addi-tive effect on R responses. We found evidence in support of

Fig. 1. Mean false alarm rate for ‘‘Remember’’ (R) responses under full atten(DA-word) conditions in younger and older adults. Error bars show the stand

a general effect of DA on recollection; false alarmsincreased significantly during both digit- and word-basedDA conditions (see Fig. 1). While older adults showed ageneral increase in false alarms compared to youngeradults, the interaction with attention condition was notsignificant.

Second, we tested the hypothesis that familiarity wouldbe particularly disrupted in the DA-word condition, as thisdistracting task would interfere with re-creation of the rep-resentational content of memory (Fernandes & Moscov-itch, 2000, 2002, 2003) critical to the familiarity process.We found that verbal memory performance suffered whenattention was divided during retrieval with a word-, butnot a digit-based, distracter task, replicating past research(Fernandes & Moscovitch, 2002, 2003). What is novel inthe current data is that we were able to show that this mate-rial-specific interference is selective to K responding (seeFig. 2). K hit rate, K accuracy, and independence modelmeasures of familiarity decreased only during the DA-word, and not DA-digit condition, as compared to FA.Aging did not interact with this effect. We discuss the impli-cations of these findings in turn.

4.1. General interference effects

Younger and older adults made more false R responsesduring both DA conditions (see Fig. 1). That the magni-

tion (FA), divided attention digits (DA-digit), and divided attention wordard error of the mean.

Fig. 2. Mean recognition accuracy under full attention (FA), divided attention digit (DA-digit) and divided attention word (DA-word) conditions inyounger and older adults. Grey bars show Remember (R) accuracy and white bars show Know (K) accuracy, measured as hit rate � false alarm rate. Errorbars show the standard error of the mean.

218 E.I. Skinner, M.A. Fernandes / Acta Psychologica 127 (2008) 211–221

tude of the increase in R false alarm rate did not differacross DA conditions suggests that manipulations of atten-tion at retrieval have a general effect on recollective-basedmemory processes. This finding is similar to that reportedin Hicks and Marsh (2000), who also found that falseresponding increased under DA conditions. Importantly,our data suggest that the false memory effects found underDA conditions are selective to R responses. At first glance,it may be surprising that participants are prone to makingany false remember responses at all. After all, these mem-ory decisions require that additional context, or details ofencoding, be recalled along with the word before partici-pants make such a response. Other research, however,has documented numerous conditions under which false,or illusory, recollective responses can be given. False recol-lections have been explained in terms of impaired sourcemonitoring (Lane & Zaragoza, 1995), the improper assign-ment of old contexts to new items (Holmes, Walters, &Rajaram, 1998), an inability to inhibit or control gist-related processes (Balota, Dolan, & Duchek, 2000), or‘‘phantom recollection’’ (Brainerd, Wright, Reyna, &Morjadin, 2001). Regardless of the mechanism by whichfalse recollections are produced, our study suggests thatavailability of attention during retrieval is critical to avoidsuch memory errors.

The claim that accurate recollection is reliant uponavailable attentional resources at retrieval is in contrastto Gardiner et al.’s (2006) suggestion that reducedresources at retrieval do not affect recollection. The dis-crepancy in our findings may be due to differences in themanipulation used to limit cognitive resources (speededresponding as compared to divided attention), differencesin study and test materials, or because Gardiner and col-

leagues performed their analyses on overall accuracy,rather than separate hit and false alarm analyses. Nonethe-less, our findings support other work suggesting that dur-ing retrieval, recollection is a more attention demandingprocess than familiarity (Jacoby, 1991; Yonelinas &Jacoby, 1994, 1995).

If reduced attentional resources at retrieval contribute tofalse R responding, one would expect that older adultswould have more false recollective experiences. Severalstudies have found that older adults are more inclined tofalsely recall and recognize information than youngeradults (Norman & Schacter, 1997; Rankin & Kausler,1979; Smith, 1975), and research suggests that the increasedrate of false remembering shown in older adults is a resultof age-related changes in the integrity of frontal lobe struc-tures (Butler, McDaniel, Dornburg, Price, & Roediger,2004; Craik, Morris, Morris, & Loewen, 1990). Asexpected, we found that older adults made fewer accuraterecollective responses than younger adults, as indicatedby their elevated R false alarm rate across all experimentalconditions. However, older adults did not show elevatedlevels of false recollections under DA conditions. The lackof interaction between attention and age manipulationssuggests that although an age-related loss in attentionalresources may contribute to increased levels of false mem-ories in older adults, other factors also contribute to agedifferences in false recollections. For example, Bunce(2003) found an interaction between false R responding,the amount of cognitive support at encoding, and frontallobe function in older adults. In that study, older adultsreported more false R responses than younger adults whenthey were given a random, but not categorizable, word listonly if they had low frontal lobe functioning. How addi-

E.I. Skinner, M.A. Fernandes / Acta Psychologica 127 (2008) 211–221 219

tional factors, including executive control and level of fron-tal functioning, relate to the incidence of false recollectivememories will need to be examined in future research.

There were differences in demographic variables andexecutive function across age groups in our study, whichmay have affected our finding of an age-related increasein false R responding. To examine the effects of education,intelligence, and cognitive flexibility on false R responding,we entered education, FSIQ (derived from the NART), andRT for Trails A and B as covariates in the analyses. Allanalyses still showed a main effect of age, suggesting thateducation, intelligence, and cognitive flexibility as assessedby the Trails test cannot account for the increased false Rresponding observed in older adults.

We also found an effect of DA on RT for each distract-ing task, with increased latency during DA conditions (rel-ative to FA), and that this increase was greater for olderadults. This corresponds with past research suggesting thatattentional resources are required to establish and maintaina retrieval set during memory retrieval, that distractingtask costs provided an index of these resource require-ments, and that older adults have a more difficult timeestablishing and maintaining the retrieval set (Andersonet al., 1998; Whiting & Smith, 1997). To examine whetherage differences in distracter task RT are affected by educa-tion, intelligence, and cognitive flexibility, we again enterededucation, FSIQ, and RT for Trails A and B as covariatesin the distracter task analyses. All analyses still showed amain effect of age and an age group · attention interaction,suggesting that these factors cannot account for the age-related increase in RT under DA conditions.

4.2. Material-specific effects on memory

Recognition memory performance decreased during theDA-word, but not DA-digit task, as compared to FA, andthis effect was unaffected by age. Importantly, we foundthat this material-specific interference effect acted specifi-cally on K measures of hit rate, accuracy, and indepen-dence measures of familiarity, and not on R responses, inyounger and older adults (see Fig. 2; white bars). Similarresults were found in an initial experiment, in which thedistracting tasks were the word-based ones used here, andan odd-digit identification task, suggesting that the resultsare robust. To our knowledge, this is the first time anyonehas shown that familiarity-based responding can be dis-rupted by DA at retrieval. The finding suggests that famil-iarity-based memory retrieval relies on the reactivation ofcontent representations, as it is disrupted specifically whenthe distracting task material is similar to that in the mem-ory task. Our claim is supported by other work showingthat familiarity, and not recollective-based responding, isaffected when processing is disrupted by another variableor task that contains material similar to that in the memorytask. For example, when lures on an auditory recognitiontask are created from the non-words of an auditory lexicaldecision task that is performed between encoding and

retrieval, accuracy of Knowing responses declines (Dew-hurst & Hitch, 1997). Our work provides evidence thatfamiliarity-based memory retrieval relies critically on theability to properly engage in either the perceptual or con-ceptual processes that re-create the content of the memory.

We also examined whether the selective disruption to Kresponding in the DA-word condition was due to anincreased level of difficulty of the word-, compared todigit-based, distracter task, but results argue against thisinterpretation. On the auditory CRT task, we found thatthe number of tones identified, and RTs to tones underdual-task conditions, were equivalent when the task wasperformed concurrently with either the word- or digit-based distracter task. We did not examine performanceon the CRT task in older adults, since the auditory sensoryloss associated with aging would lead to very poor, and/orvariable performance, preventing any meaningful interpre-tation of differences across conditions. It is thus possiblethat there was an age · task difficulty interaction. Nonethe-less, results from the auditory CRT task suggest that ourfinding of a material-specific effect on K responses cannotbe accounted for by differences in level of difficulty of theword- and digit-based distracting task. In line with this,there were no differences in accuracy or RT for these dis-tracting tasks performed under single-task conditions, sug-gesting the resource demands for these tasks wereequivalent.

Our study also showed that R hits and R accuracy wereunaffected during the DA-word condition (see Fig. 2, greybars). This suggests that during recollection, the content ofmemories can be accessed via a different network than dur-ing familiarity-based retrieval. Otherwise, R accuracyshould have also decreased in the DA-word condition. Atthis point we can only make speculations as to what theexact mechanisms of this network may be, but since recol-lection appears to involve additional activation within thefrontal lobes (Eldridge, Knowlton, Furmanski, Bookhei-mer, & Engel, 2000; Henson, Rugg, Shallice, Jospehs, &Dolan, 1999), there may be alternate routes that can accessthe content of memories, distinct from the network of brainregions recruited during familiarity-based responding.

5. Conclusions

Our study shows two novel findings: First, we foundthat DA at retrieval, regardless of the material in the dis-tracter task, led to an increase in false Remember respond-ing, suggesting that general attentional resources arerequired to properly search and/or monitor the retrievalof contextual memories. Second, we found a selectivedecrease in Know responses during a word-based, butnot digit-based, DA condition at retrieval, indicating amaterial-specific effect on familiarity. Aging was associatedwith an overall increase in false Remember responses, andwith increased latency in distracting task responses underDA conditions. Results suggest that avoiding false recollec-tive responses during retrieval requires attention, whereas

220 E.I. Skinner, M.A. Fernandes / Acta Psychologica 127 (2008) 211–221

accurate familiarity responses require reactivation of con-tent-specific representations.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a grant from the Na-tional Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Can-ada (NSERC) awarded to M.F., a post-graduatescholarship from NSERC to E.S.

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