Source reinstatement in item-method directed forgetting influences recognition strategies

In item-method directed forgetting, participants study items paired with instructions to either remember or forget each item for the purpose of an upcoming memory test. Such instructions are effective, in that participants recall or recognize more remember- than forget-cued items when asked to disregard the cues at test. Recent research has shown that context and source information associated with targets at encoding are not subject to any influence of directed forgetting, such that both remember and forget items benefit equivalently from context reinstatement at test. In the present study, remember and forget items were presented by two sources, one of which presented mostly remember items and one of which presented mostly forget items. When the sources were reinstated at recognition, participants displayed more liberal responding to the mostly-remember source, such that item discriminability was actually worse compared to the mostly-forget source. When source information is reinstated at test, participants use their knowledge about the sources heuristically when making recognition judgements