ABSTRACT
Implicit memory has been defined as an evolutionarily “early” system (Reber, 1992), as dominating infant memory in the first 2 years of life (Schacter & Moscovitch, 1984), and as having a different developmental time course than explicit memory (Nelson, 1995, but see Rovee-Collier, 1997b). However, despite these proposals, few studies have investigated the developmental time-course of implicit memory, even though the neural structures thought to be involved in implicit memory mature early within the first year (Nelson, 1995, 1997). Structures that lie outside the medial temporal lobe, such as the cerebellum (conditioning), extrastriate occipital cortex, and inferior temporal cortex (visual priming, pattern learning, prototype learning), the striatum/basal ganglia (procedural learning and, in animals, habit learning), and frontal cortex (puzzle learning, conceptual fluency judgements) have been implicated in tests of implicit memory (see Squire, 1994). However, most implicit memory tasks require behavioural responses such as accuracy, reaction time, and stimulus categorization, which require subjects to be able to understand verbal instructions and respond motorically to stimuli. Because of these task requirements, few experiments have been adapted for a preverbal subject population. To further elaborate on the development of the implicit memory system, we will highlight three areas that have been used to test implicit memory in infants and young children: priming, procedural learning, and conditioning.
