Manipulating remember and know judgements of autobiographical memories: an investigation of false memory creation

We investigated memory qualities that affect judgements of whether a recollection is a personal memory or self-knowledge. In Experiment 1, college students described three types of childhood experiences: remembered, known but not remembered, and unsure whether remembered or known. After describing the experiences, they rated their memories on several characteristics (e.g. visual detail, emotion). Remembered events were rated as containing more information on almost all the dimensions than the known events (unsure events were rated between the other two types of events). Based on the observed differences, in Experiments 2 and 3 we manipulated remember versus know ratings. Participants described a remember, know, or unsure event. Some then formed a mental image of the event while others did not. Creation and description of a mental image led participants to rate known events closer to remember. The remember/know rating is a source-monitoring decision based on the quality of the memory.