THE ILLUSION OF FAMILIARITY - AN ALTERNATIVE TO THE REPORT-CRITERION ACCOUNT OF HYPNOTIC RECALL

Hypnosis increases the likelihood that participants will report incorrect material at higher levels of confidence. One interpretation of such data is that hypnosis induces individuals to lower the criterion they use to make memory reports. A lowered report criterion could account for the increase in items that participants are willing to report as memories but not for the increase in confidence that typically accompanies hypnotic retrieval. Although some participants may indeed lower their report criterion, this alone should not result in the highly confident confabulation so often observed. An alternative perspective is that for some participants, hypnosis alters the experience of retrieval such that items generated during retrieval attempts are more likely to have the qualities (e.g., perceptual fluency, vividness) usually associated with remembering. This illusion of familiarity would account for the higher levels of confidence that are so frequently observed in hypnotic recall, and adopting this perspective should lead to even greater caution in the use of hypnosis as an aid to retrieval.