Implicit Memory

Implicit Memory

1. testing memory without participants awareness, resulting in seemingly unconscious recollection

2. Implicit task: word fragment

   • Explicit task: recall, recognition

3. Perceptual implicit task - data driven, perceptually impoverished displays, surface level features, inc word frag

   • Conceptual implicit task - employ semantic knowledge, inc word assoc, general knowledge questions and category instance generation

4. Empirical evidence

   • Tulving 1982
     • word fragment task
     • word lists and then test with fragments either from previous words or new
       • performance better for words from previous list - indicates implicit memory
         • but is this implicit memory? intentional but unconscious? Butler and Berry 2001

5. TAP account

   • Roediger et al
   • not between implicit explicit but type of processing e.g. perceptual or conceptual
     • e.g. free recall is best conceptual test so in implicit conceptual tests the conditions should match that of free recall e.g. no cues
       • Problems e.g. Hunt 1990 found orthographic distinctiveness (perceptual) influenced both perceptual and conceptual performance
         • McDermott and Roediger 1996 found conceptual repetition didn't help category exemplar generation
           • components of processing - diff processes will be employed in any two tests that dissociate e.g.
             • circularity problems

6. MMS account

   • Squire - procedural = implicit and declarative = explicit
     • diff tests tax different memory systems
       • Problems e.g. lack of agreement re criteria distinguishing systems - leads to infinite systems
         • location and brain structures not enough - need to consider processes as well as systems

7. Amnesiac data

   • Graf et al 1984
     • word preference task
       • 3 explicit and 1 implicit test
         • performed poorly on explicit and as well as controls on implicit
   • Vaidya/Cermak 1995
     • good performance on perceptual implicit and conceptual implicit
       • bad performance on explicit perceptual and conceptual
       • link to Mandler dual process
         • familiarity - normal performance - implicit & perceptual
           • context based - poor performance - explicit & conceptual
         • application of familiarity/context based processing to task leads to differences in implict/explicit memory tasks and perceptual/conceptual tasks