Recognition memory and awareness for famous and obscure musical themes

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Abstract
In each of two experiments, subjects listened to a set of famous and obscure musical themes. In later recognition tests in which these themes were re-presented along with a set of similar themes, subjects had to identify the themes they had heard earlier in the experiment. In addition, for each theme that subjects so identified, they reported whether they consciously recollected its earlier occurrence (“remember”) or knew that it had occurred earlier because it was familiar in the experimental context (“know”). Subjects were much more likely to recognise the famous themes as having occurred earlier in the experiment and this effect appeared in “remember” but not in “know” responses. Moreover, whereas subjects made far more “remember” than “know” responses for the famous themes, they tended, if anything, to make more “know” than “remember” responses for the obscure themes. The results were attributed to the relative ease with which subjects could encode famous themes in an elaborative, associative fashion.

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