They were asked a semantic orienting question directly after each sentence. Later, a recognition task was performed followed by confidence ratings for each item recognized. The semantic integration paradigm infers that when two similar sentences are encountered, they are semantically combined in memory to form a gist integration of the sentences. When subjects were asked if they heard a similar non-presented sentence they confidently agreed. This rating of higher confidence despite presentation or non-presentation is termed the linear abstraction effect .
Subjects couldn t distinguish the old sentences from the new ones.
Linear abstraction effects occurred as the levels of sentence complexity increased, most likely because the more detailed sentences closely matched the subjects gist integrations. Reality monitoring is the process of distinguishing between events that actually happened and those that were internally constructed. Phenomenological characteristics are used to assess the source of memories and other details that make them seem realistic. It is postulated that people may fail to notice or use reality monitoring cues causing source monitoring errors. Roediger and McDermott Using Remember-Know judgments, they found that people are very confident in their false alarms and that these false alarms are rated as Remember judgments.