The process of distinguishing between really presented and generated information (in memory tasks)

Abstract

Our cognitive system is able to complete missing information: perceive partially occluded objects, draw conclusions and so on. The results of a completion process always go beyond present information. And to behave appropriately we need to distinguish between completed and really perceived information. But the mechanism of this process still remains unknown. One of the attempts to cast a light upon this problem was Source Monitoring Theory, proposed by Johnson and his colleagues [Johnson et al. 1993]. The authors investigate this problem using memory tasks and they suppose that information regarding the source of memory could be obtained by a decision making process based on difference in memory features. The results of experiments show that if our memory of some events contains more information of how it looked, and about the meaning of the event (perceptual and semantic memory features) then participants tend to think that such event has in fact happened. And if some memory contains more information as to which cognitive processes generated the image stored in memory, then participants tend to think that this event was generated by our cognitive system.