This research will explore the basis for the subjective experiences associated with memory, question answering, and evaluation. The research is guided by a model in which such experiences depend on an inference about the ease with which ideas come to mind. One set of experiments will investigate whether the experience of remembering is based on the ease with which ideas come to mind during recall attempts. The particular ideas that come to mind during recall will be manipulated independently of the actual to- be-remembered events, thereby creating memory illusions. Other experiments will investigate whether the experience of confidence in answers to world knowledge questions and the evaluation of the difficulty of questions is based on the ease with which answers come to mind. Prior exposure to the right or wrong answers will make those answers come to mind readily in response to the questions, thereby creating illusions of knowing and underestimations of question difficulty. The research will add to our understanding of the factors that create errors of memory and judgment in a variety of domains, including education, eyewitness testimony, and clinical memory disorders.
