How many response options? A study of remember–know testing procedures

The remember–know procedure can be conducted in one or two steps. The one-step procedure does not include a recognition response (old–new) prior to the remember–know response. It is observed consistently that the one-step procedure leads to a more liberal placement of the response criterion, but it is unclear whether recognition accuracy is affected by the number of procedural steps. However, previous studies used bias-dependent measures of accuracy (A′ and d′). We manipulated the number of steps and confirmed the finding that the response criterion is more liberal with the one-step procedure. More importantly, we employed a signal detection theory bias-free accuracy measure (da) to show that varying the number of steps does not affect recognition accuracy, and we demonstrated that this pattern of results does not change when the dual process signal detection model (Yonelinas, 1997) is applied.