ABSTRACT
This chapter will focus on several aspects of implicit memory phenomena. In contradistinction to the behavior of explicit memory, implicit memory often defies the ravages of time and the effects of normal aging, and can also be dissociated from conscious recollection. By definition, implicit memory is memory-based performance that does not require conscious recollection, although the absence of the latter is not an absolute requirement. It is well known and documented that explicit memory (conscious recollection) declines predictably over long-term intervals (minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years), and also as a function of increasing age in older adults and under certain neurological deficits (e.g., amnesia, Alzheimer’s disease). Thus, some dissociations are quantitative, whereas others are qualitative in nature. Over 30 years of research by this author (largely in collaboration with Alan Brown, who inspired this volume), along with a selective sample of other investigators’ work, will be reviewed in this chapter. The phenomena are interesting in their own right, but they will also be discussed with an eye towards a better understanding of the underlying memory processes and systems in general.
