Responsibility and valence as factors in recognition and confidence in recognition of words

Both clinical and nonclinical groups may experience significant cognitive consequences as a result of perceived responsibility. Individuals with increased responsibility have been found to have a positive memory bias, but also a decline in metamemory for salient stimuli. Stimulus salience improves retrieval via directive attention but may impair metamemory, especially in anxious populations. It has been proposed that progressive exposure to emotionally salient stimuli reduces confidence in memory while having no effect on memory accuracy in OCD patients and nonclinical participants with OCD symptoms. Perceived responsibility is linked to a positive memory bias for negative stimuli, as well as lower memory confidence. The current study looked into the relationship between responsibility, as measured by the Responsibility Attitude Scale (RAS), recognition, and confidence in recognising words of varying valence in a healthy population. The RAS was given to 85 healthy participants before they took part in a word recognition task. The results showed that responsibility attitude did not predict memory accuracy or confidence for words with a negative, positive, or neutral valence. Furthermore, while word valence had no effect on memory confidence, it did have an effect on memory accuracy. Future research implications point to the use of responsibility-relevant stimuli.