Diffusion vs. linear ballistic accumulation: Different models, different conclusions about the slope of the zROC in recognition memory

Abstract

The relative amount of variability in memory strength for targets vs. lures in recognition memory is commonly measured using the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) procedure, in which participants are given either a bias manipulation or are instructed to give confidence ratings to probe items. A near universal finding is that targets have higher variability than lures. Ratcliff and Starns (2009) questioned the conclusions of the ROC procedure by demonstrating that accounting for decision noise within a response time model yields different conclusions about relative memory evidence than the ROC procedure yields. In an attempt to better understand the source of the discrepancy, we applied..