Abstract
Sixty-four subjects were administered two tests of explicit memory (selective recall and recognition) and four tests of implicit memory (identification in a perceptual clarification procedure, word-fragment completion, tachistoscopic identification, and anagram solution). Each test drew on a different subset of a long list of previously displayed words. Although the four implicit memory tests showed sizable priming effects, correlational and factor analyses showed striking dissociations. On the one hand, performance on the perceptual clarification procedure and word-completion tests were related to one another, as well as to recall and recognition. On the other hand, performance on tachistoscopic identification and anagram solution were related to one another, but not to the measures for the other tasks. A framework is proposed to reconcile these new results with current knowledge on the explicit/implicit memory distinction, based in particular on studies of amnesic subjects. It is argued that a small number of tasks, especially tachistoscopic identification, may serve as relatively uncontaminated and ubiquitous indicators of implicit memory. However, explicit remembering could affect performance in so-called implicit memory tasks that allow for a strategy of controlled selection of candidate responses from accumulating cues, in experimental conditions that make the explicit remembering of relevant events possible.
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This article is based in part on the second author's master's thesis, which was done at the Université René Descartes of Paris under the direction of the first author. The study was supported by the CNRS (UA 656), Université René Descartes, EPHE (3° section), and CNAM (Service de recherches de I'INOP).
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Perruchet, P., Baveux, P. Correlational analyses of explicit and implicit memory performance. Memory & Cognition 17, 77–86 (1989). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03199559
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03199559