Retrieval monitoring is influenced by information value: The interplay between importance and confidence on false memory ☆ Ian M. McDonough a, ⁎, Dung C. Bui b , Michael C. Friedman c , Alan D. Castel d a Department of Psychology, University of Alabama, 505 Hackberry Lane, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487, USA b Department of Psychology, Washington University in St. Louis, One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO 63130, USA c Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching, Harvard University, 125 Mt. Auburn Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA d Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, 1285 Franz Hall, Box 951563, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA abstract article info Article history: Received 20 December 2014 Received in revised form 28 May 2015 Accepted 29 July 2015 Available online xxxx Keywords: False memory Heuristics Memory Metamemory Word recognition Value The perceived value of information can influence one's motivation to successfully remember that information. This study investigated how information value can affect memory search and evaluation processes (i.e., retrieval moni- toring). In Experiment 1, participants studied unrelated words associated with low, medium, or high values. Subse- quent memory tests required participants to selectively monitor retrieval for different values. False memory effects were smaller when searching memory for high-value than low-value words, suggesting that people more effectively monitored more important information. In Experiment 2, participants studied semantically-related words, and the need for retrieval monitoring was reduced at test by using inclusion instructions (i.e., endorsement of any word re- lated to the studied words) compared with standard instructions. Inclusion instructions led to increases in false rec- ognition for low-value, but not for high-value words, suggesting that under standard-instruction conditions retrieval monitoring was less likely to occur for important information. Experiment 3 showed that words retrieved with lower confidence were associated with more effective retrieval monitoring, suggesting that the quality of the re- trieved memory influenced the degree and effectiveness of monitoring processes. Ironically, unless encouraged to do so, people were less likely to carefully monitor important information, even though people want to remember important memories most accurately. © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Every day people encounter more information than they can possibly remember. As technology advances, even more information is available through a variety of media outlets. This increased exposure to informa- tion heightens the need for people to selectively attend to and prioritize information based on their personal goals and motivations that are most important so that they will be more likely to later remember that in- formation. Indeed, people are quite adept at later remembering informa- tion deemed to be important (e.g., Ariel, Dunlosky, & Bailey, 2009; Castel, Benjamin, Craik, & Watkins, 2002; Loftus & Wickens, 1970). Furthermore, people also expect to remember more important information than less important information (e.g., Festini, Hartley, Tauber, & Rhodes, 2013; Friedman & Castel, 2011; Kassam, Gilbert, Swencionis, & Wilson, 2009). While information deemed important might affect how people strategi- cally attend to or encode information, whether the importance of infor- mation affects the strategies by which people search and evaluate their memories at retrieval (i.e., retrieval monitoring) is virtually unknown. Does event importance affect retrieval-monitoring processes? If so, what stages of retrieval monitoring are most affected? To address this question, the present study manipulated the perceived importance of in- formation and the degree of retrieval monitoring. Theories pertaining to retrieval monitoring propose that memorial expectations serve a key role in how people search memory and evaluate retrieved information (e.g., Gallo, 2010; Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993). For instance, people expect that visually distinctive events (i.e., events that contain many item-specific details) such as pictures will be better remembered than visually impoverished information such as words (e.g., Schacter & Wiseman, 2006). However, when the ex- pected item-specific details cannot be retrieved for a particular event, people quickly and accurately reject the event as having occurred (e.g., “This item probably wasn't presented as a picture, because I'd remember more specific details.”). In other words, people base their memory decisions on the expected qualitative characteristics of the to- be-recollected information and can avoid false memories if the retrieved information does not match those expectations. This type of retrieval- monitoring process has been referred to as a distinctiveness heuristic (Schacter, Israel, & Racine, 1999) and has been extended to conceptually distinctive relative to conceptually non-distinctive events as well (e.g., Gallo, Meadow, Johnson, & Foster, 2008; McDonough & Gallo, 2008). Thus, this reduced susceptibility to false memories following the Acta Psychologica 161 (2015) 7–17 ☆ Aspects of these data were presented at the 53rd Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society (2013, Toronto, Canada). ⁎ Corresponding author at: 505 Hackberry Lane, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487, USA. E-mail address: ian.mcdonough@gmail.com (I.M. McDonough). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2015.07.017 0001-6918/© 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Acta Psychologica journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/ locate/actpsy