ABSTRACT
Implicit tests of memory are those that measure retention indirectly, by transfer of prior experience ostensibly unrelated to ongoing behaviour. Performance on implicit memory tests is often dissociated from that on explicit memory tests, psychologists’ traditional measure of conscious recollection, such as free recall, cued recall and recognition. For example, densely amnesic patients who recall very little on explicit tests perform at normal levels on implicit tests. Similarly, in normal populations, independent variables often affect performance on implicit and explicit tests in different ways. This chapter surveys some basic facts that have been discovered about priming on implicit memory tests and extensions of this work into other arenas. There are at least two types of implicit memory test-perceptual and conceptual. Perceptual implicit memory tests involve processes used in the recognition of words and objects and are greatly affected by specificity of perceptual operations, but little affected by manipulations of meaning. Conceptual memory tests are greatly affected by manipulations of meaning, but little affected by changes of perceptual operations.
