Priming and Multiple Memory Systems: Perceptual Mechanisms of Implicit Memory

Daniel L Schacter

doi:10.1162/jocn.1992.4.3.244

Abstract

Abstract Research examining the relation between explicit and implicit forms of memory has generated a great deal of evidence concerning the issue of multiple memory systems. This article focuses on an extensively studied implicit memory phenomenon, known as direct or repetition priming, and examines the hypothesis that priming effects on various tasks reflect the operation of a perceptual representation system (PRS)-a class of cortically based subsystems that operate at a presemantic level and support non conscious expressions of memory. Three PRS subsystems are examined: visual word form, structural description, and auditory word form. Pertinent cognitive, neuropsychological, and neurobiological evidence is reviewed, alternative classificatory schemes are discussed, and important conceptual and terminological issues are considered.

Highlights

During the past 25 years, questions concerning the nature and number of memory systems have been at the forefront of cognitive, neuropsychological, and neurobiological research
Several lines of evidence have led to the proposal that the visual word form system subserves priming effects on so-called data driven or perceptually based implicit memory tasks, such as stem or fragment completion, where subjects provide the first word that comes to mind in response to three-letter stems o r graphemic fragments, and perceptual or word identijication, where subjects attempt to identi@ briefly presented words
These findings indicate that a visual encounter with a word does not necessarily or inevitably create a highly specific and novel of representation of it in the word form system, and indicate that specific perceptual representations are created under appropriate conditions