EEG Reveals Familiarity by Controlling Confidence in Memory Retrieval

Author(s): Liao, Kueida; Mollison, Matthew; Curran, Tim; de Sa, Virginia | Abstract: We explore the separation of decision confidence and familiarity components in EEG data from recognition memory experiments. We first develop and test a classifier designed to classify decision confidence on new trials. We then use this classifier to control for confidence in the selection of trials of familiarity and correct rejection. This allows us to reveal a familiarity component that is of similar magnitude for recollection and familiarity judgements. This familiarity component reveals more of a frontal extent than obtained without confidence matching. We believe that this preliminary result can serve as a guide for designing future electrophysiological experiments to better separate the different components of recognition memory and that the technique of using classifiers to control for response-related covariates can be used for early exploration of these components in existing data.