| Abstract: | In a previously reported study using the process dissociation procedure, we (M. Verfaellie & J. Treadwell, see record 1993-18420-001) demonstrated that amnesic patients were impaired relative to controls in their recognition of words they had solved as anagrams but performed comparably to controls in their recognition of words they had read. H. L. Roediger and K. B. McDermott (see record 1994-30444-001) suggested that the finding of normal performance in the read condition of our study might have been due to differing false-alarm rates between groups, a finding that would complicate application of the process dissociation procedure. In this reply, we argue that the amnesic patients' normal performance in this condition was not due just to differences in guessing rate and is not inconsistent with findings from standard recognition memory tests. In addition, 2 corrections to the process dissociation procedure discussed by Roediger and McDermott are considered as solutions to the problem of differing false-alarm rates. Applied to our amnesic data, these corrections reinforce our original conclusion that under conditions in which the contribution of recollection is minimal, amnesic patients' performance is normal. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
