# Does the Experience of Remembering Differentially Influence the Factual Accuracy of Recognition, and Confidence in Its Accuracy?

## TL;DR

The study shows that high confidence in remembering something doesn't always mean it's accurate, especially when similar memories are involved.

## Contribution

The research reveals that memory vividness and confidence can dissociate from factual accuracy, challenging assumptions about reliable memory.

## Key findings

- High confidence in memory is associated with accuracy when similar lures are present.
- Confidence and accuracy can diverge when similar memories are misremembered.
- Vivid memories are strongly linked to confidence but not always to factual accuracy.

## Abstract

Remembering is typically viewed as unreliable and prone to errors, whereas highly confident recognition memory is often believed to be highly reliable and associated with high recognition accuracy. We evaluated these beliefs using memory for photographs of natural scenes in two studies: recognition memory to examine picture similarity effects in a 2-alternative forced-choice measure, and source memory to examine picture-location associations with a continuous retrieval accuracy measure. Additionally, we assessed the experience of remembering and its influence on judgments of confidence and memory accuracy. High confidence remembering was associated with high accuracy when perceptually or mnemonically similar lures were presented in the item recognition task. However, an association between high confidence and high accuracy was also seen in the absence of remembering for mnemonically similar lures. The confidence-accuracy inversion in the picture similarity task is speculated due to confidently (mis)remembering a similar picture stored in memory. Based on analyses of participant and trial level data, in both studies memory quality was strongly associated with confidence. Importantly, remembering moderated the association between recognition accuracy and confidence judgments, differentially influencing confidence more than it influenced accuracy. Memory quality moderated the association between source accuracy and confidence, the relationship being stronger for images remembered vividly. Our findings have implications for accounts of vividness, confidence, episodic memory, and eyewitness testimony. High confidence recognition may not in all cases reliably imply high accuracy. Highly vivid memories, confidently recollected, may not always be factually accurate.