Unconscious / Non-declarative Memory

Unconscious / Non-declarative Memory

1. Unconscious Influences

   • Subliminal Advertising
     • James Vicary flashed a subliminal message
       • "Eat Popcorn" in a movie theatre and reported 50% increase in sales
         • Never verified.

2. Subliminal Mere Exposure Effect

   • Kunst-Wilson & Zajonc (1980)
     • 10 octagons were presented for a very brief duration ( 5 repetitions of each stimulus in random order)
       • Presented too quickly to be consciously aware - but still influence our behaviour
       • TEST PHASE: Recognition judgement (explicit memory judgement) "Which one was shown previously?" "Which one do you prefer?" (Indirectly testing memory)
       • RESULTS: Not able to recognise which ones were seen before. A "mere exposure" effect - a tendency to prefer things that has been seen before
         • Must be driven by something UNCONSCIOUS otherwise it would have been recognised

3. Implications: Advertising - drive our behaviour? Free will - is it an illusion?

4. Effects of Prior Exposure on other judgements

   • Same as Kunst-Wilson & Zajonc (1980) but different judgement task
     • "Which one of these two seems brighter / darker?"
       • Also tendency to pick previously studied stimuli
         • Experience FACILITATION to processing?
           • Misattribute fluency to liking etc

5. Priming without awareness

   • SUDY PHASE: Lists of words to read (5 seconds per word)
     • TEST PHASE: Recogntiion task : "Have you seen this word before?" Word fragment completion: e.g. L_TT_CE
       • RESULTS: Completion rates were higher for previously studied words (i.e. priming occurred) , regardless of recognition
         • PRIMING is SEPARATE from EXPLICIT MEMORY

6. Priming after 17 Years?

   • PP's asked to identify fragments of pictures they had seen 17 years previously
     • Showed priming effect even after long retention interval. 1/3 of PPs could not even remember taking part in the experiment
       • Represents unconscious memory effects which is invulnerable to the passage of time

7. IMPLICIT LEARNING - Sequential Reaction Time (SRT) task

   • Nissen & Bullemer, 1987)
     • Continuously repeating sequence Vs Random sequence for 10 trials.
       • Amnesiac patients did not recognise that there was a repeating sequence, but still showed faster responding to the repeating sequence
         • The amnesiac individuals showed improvement - learning is occurring at an unconscious level?

8. IMPLICIT LEARNING

   • Serial Interception Sequence Learning Task (Guitar Hero)
     • Had to press keys in a sequence when dots overlapped circles.
       • Given sequences they had learned before and ones that they hadn't
         • Sequences that were performed before were performed more successfully - learning effect for trained sequences
           • Memory was evident in motor performance but not in the explicit knowledge test (no recognition of learning sequence)

9. Contextual Cuing

   • "Find the T in the display, is it pointing to the left or right?"
     • Some displays were repeated, some were novel
       • Reaction times to repeated displays were 100 ms faster than noel displays
         • Yet, RECOGNITION was near CHANCE PERFORMANCE
   • Contextual cuing effect- Always have the same distractions- which help cue peoples attention to the location of the target over trials

10. Two times someone may be unaware: 1) Subliminal priming (implicit learning - not aware of stimuli) 2) Priming (Implicit memory- not aware at retrieval stage)