Implicit Memory

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Implicit Memory
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Claparede described a amnesic patient. She could
add and spell but did not recognize her doctors
or nurses. When Claparede would meet his
patients in the morning he would shake their
hands. One day he hid a small pin in his hand.
The amnesic patient got a small prick that
morning. The next morning she didnt want to
shake his hand. She said, Sometimes people hide
things in their hands.
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What is Implicit Memory

• Term coined by Schacter (1987)
• This memory is revealed when previous experiences
  facilitate performance on a task that does not
  require intentional recollection of the
  experiences
• Quite simply, it is knowledge without awareness
• Examples procedural knowledge, conditioning, and
  habituation

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The Study of Implicit Memory

• Topics of study
• Learning Artificial Grammar
• Redundant Sequence Learning
• Controlling Complex Systems
• Priming
• Skill Acquisition

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Learning Grammar

• Example of children learning language
• There are explicit rules to which certain
  sequences of grammatical forms are permissible
• Children are able to use their native grammar
  very well
• Children are unable to describe the underlying
  grammatical rules

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Learning Artificial Grammar

• Reber (1967) used an Artificial Grammar defined
  by a series of rules about how letters may be
  related to one another
• One group learned sequences of letters generated
  by the grammar and the other group learned random
  letter sequences
• Both groups were shown letter strings, half
  grammatical and half random letters
• Subjects who learned grammatical sequences
  recognized 79 of the new grammatical sequences

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Redundant Sequence Learning

• Bullemer (1987) used the idea of repeated
  sequences to test implicit learning
• Subjects performed a button press task that
  corresponded to spatial locations on a computer
  screen
• One group performed under random conditions and
  the other under redundant conditions
• The redundant group speeded up in their RxN times
• Implicit Learning?

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Redundant Sequence Learning

• Though some subjects performed faster on the test
  some could describe the pattern explicitly and
  some could not
• How sure are we that the second class of people
  did not really have explicit access to the
  knowledge?
• During testing of the unaware group the
  experimenter stopped and asked for a prediction
  of next location. Performed at chance