Traditionally, learning and memory has been studied with tasks which direct individuals to explicitly recall or recognize events of the recent past in the last decade, psychologists have come to study memory through a set of measures that make no explicit reference to the past, and indirectly demonstrate transfer of past experience regardless of conscious awareness or intent. Such implicit measures behave differently from traditional explicit measures of memory; performance is often uncorrelated or dissociated on the two types of tests. Variables that affect explicit memory in one way often have no effect or opposite effects on implicit measures of memory. One explanation for the differences between implicit and explicit measures of memory is that they rely on in dependent memory systems with distinct principles of operation. Alternately, the processing approach attempts to explain such differences using existing theories of memory. The proposed research will examine implicit memory phenomena, with particular focus on the processing approach. First, a series of experiments will examine a phenomenon which challenges processing theory. Next a new technique (unit analysis) will be used to examine in detail the precise pattern of differences between implicit and explicit memory, with particular focus on the predictions of both systems and processing theory. Finally, the possibility that processing theory can be extended to explain implicit memory for objects will be examined in several experiments.
