Abstract
Skin conduction responses (SCRs) and event-related brain potentials (ERPs) are shown to be sensitive indicators of a memory trace in both implicit and explicit tests of memory. In several explicit recognition tasks, the amplitude of both ERPs and SCRs was higher for new than for repeated words, regardless of whether the subjects recognized or missed the old words. In implicit tasks in which reaction times and ERPs were recorded concurrently, categorical decisions were faster with studied than with new words, but the magnitude of the repetition effect did not vary with the number of repetitions or with the elapsed time since the last repetition. In contrast, ERPs were sensitive to both variables, suggesting that ERPs may be correlated with the memory strength of a trace.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bentin, S. (1987). Event-related potentials, semantic processes, and expectancy factors in word recognition. Brain & Language, 31, 308–327.
Bentin, S., & McCarthy, M. (1990). Immediate repetition effects on event-related potentials and on RT in different tasks. Manuscript submitted for publication.
Bentin, S., McCarthy, M., & Wood, C. C. (1985). Event-related potentials, lexical decision and semantic priming. Electroencephalography & Clinical Neurophysiology, 60, 343–355.
Bentin, S., & Peled, B.-S. (in press). The contribution of task-related factors to ERP repetition effects at short and long lags. Memory & Cognition.
Cohen, N. J., & Squire, R. L. (1980). Preserved learning and retention of pattern-analyzing skill in amnesia: Dissociation of knowing how and knowing that. Science, 210, 207–210.
Craik, F. F. M., & Blankstein, K. R. (1975). Psychophysiology and human memory. In P. H. Venables & M. J. Christie (Eds.), Research in psychophysiology. New York: Wiley.
Diamond, R., & Rozin, P. (1984). Activation of existing memories in anterograde amnesia. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 93, 98–105.
Dixon, N. F. (1971). Subliminal perception: The nature of a controversy. London: McGraw-Hill.
Donchin, E., Ritter, W., & McCallum, W. C. (1978). Cognitive psychophysiology: The endogenous potentials of the ERP. In E. Callaway, P. Tueting, & S. H. Koslow (Eds.), Event-related potentials in man (pp. 349-411). New York: Academic Press.
Fabiani, M., Karis, D., & Donchin, E. (1986). P300 and recall in an incidental memory paradigm. Psychophysiology, 23, 298–308.
Graf, P., & Schacter, D. L. (1985). Implicit and explicit memory for new associations in normal and amnesic subjects. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 11, 511–518.
Graf, P., Squire, R. L., & Mandler, G. (1984). The information that amnesic patients do not forget. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 10, 164–178.
Hayman, C. G., & Tulving, E. (1989). Contingent dissociation between recognition and fragment completion: The method of triangulation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 15, 228–240.
Jacoby, L. L. (1983). Perceptual enhancement: Persistent effects of an experience. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 9, 21–38.
Jacoby, L. L., & Hayman, C. A. G. (1987). Specific visual transfer in word identification. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 13, 456–463.
Jacoby, L. L., & Witherspoon, D. (1982). Remembering without awareness. Canadian Journal of Psychology, 36, 300–324.
Karis, D., Fabiani, M., & Donchin, E. (1984). “P300” and memory: Individual differences in the von Restorff effect. Cognitive Psychology, 16, 177–216.
Kutas, M. (1988). Review of event-related studies of memory. In M. S. Gazzaniga (Ed.), Perspectives in memory research (pp. 181-218). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Kutas, M., & Hillyard, S. A. (1984). Brain potentials during reading reflect word expectancy and semantic association. Nature, 307, 161–163.
Mandler, G. (1980). Recognizing: The judgement of previous occurrence. Psychological Review, 87, 252–271.
McCarthy, G., & Donchin, E. (1981). A metric of thought: A comparison of P300 latency and reaction time. Science, 211, 77–80.
Mitchell, D. B., & Brown, A. S. (1988). Persistent repetition priming in picture naming and its dissociation from recognition memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 14, 213–222.
Moscovitch, M. (1985). Memory from infancy to old age: Implications for theories for normal and pathological memory. Annals of the New York Academy of Science, 444, 78–96.
Moscovitch, M., & Umiltà, C. (in press). Modularity and neuropsychology. In M. F. Schwartz (Ed.), Modular deficits in Alzheimertype dementia (pp. 000-000). Cambridge, MA: MIT/Bradford Press.
Nagy, M. E., & Rugg, M. D. (1989). Modulation of event-related potentials by word repetition: The effects of inter-item lag. Psychophysiology, 26, 431–436.
Neville, H. J., Kutas, M., Chesney, G., & Schmidt, A. L. (1986). Event-related brain potentials during initial encoding and recognition memory of congruous and incongruous words. Journal of Memory & Language, 25, 75–92.
Paller, K. A., Kutas, M., & Mayes, A. R. (1987). Neural correlates of encoding in an incidental learning paradigm. Electroencephalography & Clinical Neurophysiology, 67, 360–371.
Paller, K. A., McCarthy, G., & Wood, C. C (1988). ERPs predictive of subsequent recall and recognition performance. Biological Psychology, 26, 269–276.
Richardson-Klavehn, A., & Bjork, R. A. (1988). Measures of memory. Annual Review of Psychology, 39, 475–543.
Roediger, H. L. III, & Blaxton, T. A. (1987). Retrieval modes produce dissociations in memory for surface information. In D. S. Gorfein & R. R. Hoffman (Eds.), Memory and cognitive processes: The Ebbinghaus Centennial Conference (pp. 349-379). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Rozin, P. (1976). The psychobiological approach to human memory. In M. R. Rosenzweig & E. L. Bennett (Eds.), Neural mechanisms of learning and memory (pp. 000-000). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Rugg, M. D. (1985). The effects of semantic priming and word repetition on event-related potentials. Psychophysiology, 22, 642–647.
Rugg, M. D. (1987). Dissociation of semantic priming, word and non-word repetition effects by event-related potentials. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Experimental Psychology, 39A, 123–148.
Schacter, D. L. (1987). Implicit memory: History and current status. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 13, 501–518.
Smith, M. C., MacLeod, C. M., Bain, J. D., & Hoppe, R. B. (1989). Lexical decision as an indirect test of memory: Repetition priming and list-wide priming as a function of type of encoding. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 15, 1109–1118.
Squire, L. R., & Cohen, N. J. (1984). Human memory and amnesia. In J. McGaugh, G. Lynch, & N. Weinberger (Eds.), Proceedings of the Conference on the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory (pp. 3-64). New York: Guilford.
Tulving, E. (1985). How many memory systems are there? American Psychologist, 40, 385–398.
Tulving, E., Schacter, D. L., & Stark, H. A. (1982). Priming effects in word-fragment completion are independent of recognition memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 8, 336–342.
Warrington, E. K., & Weiskrantz, L. (1974). The effect of prior learning on subsequent retention in amnesic patients. Neuropsychologia, 12, 419–428.
Warrington, E. K., & Weiskrantz, L. (1978). Further analysis of the prior learning effect in amnesic patients. Neuropsychologia, 16, 169–186.
Witherspoon, D., & Moscovitch, M. (1989). Stochastic independence between two implicit memory tasks. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 15, 22–30.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
This study was supported by the Israeli Academy of Sciences: The Fund for Basic Research. M. Moscovitch was supported by NSERC of Canada. We are grateful to Inbal Haeth, who ran the semantic decision task, and to Peter Graf, Marta Kutas, Mick Rugg, and Dan Schacter for useful comments.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Bentin, S., Moscovitch, M. Psychophysiological indices of implicit memory performance. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 28, 346–352 (1990). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03334040
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03334040