TAP, implicit and explicit memory, and adult memory development.

Abstract

Three critical facts about explicit and implicit memory test performance were discovered in the early 1980s, and they provided the impetus for the current widespread research interest on this topic. First, there was the finding that patients with amnesia can show entirely normal performance on implicit memory tests, such as word stem completion, despite being severely impaired on traditional explicit memory tests, such as free and cued recall. Second, findings from healthy young adults showed that a variety of experimental manipulations have different effects on performance of explicit and implicit memory tests. Third, experiments on life - span development revealed that whereas explicit memory test performance increases in childhood and declines in late adulthood, implicit memory performance remains the same across this period.These basic facts about implicit and explicit memory led us (e.g., Graf, 1991; Graf & Mandler, 1984; Graf & Schacter, 1989) to propose a view of memory based on the notion of transfer appropriate processing (TAP) of Morris, Bransford, and Franks (1977). We make three specific assumptions to explain the disassociation between implicit and explicit memory. First, along with Mandler (1980), we distinguish between two memory organizing processes -- integration and elaboration. Integration is the process by which the various elements that make up an item are related to each other so as to form a single unit, and elaboration is the process by which such units are related to each other. Second, we assume that every kind of study task engages a combination of integrative and elaborative processing, but that some tasks focus primarily on integrative processing, and others focus more heavily on elaborative processing. Third, we also assume that every kind of test engages a combination of integrative and elaborative processing, but that implicit memory tests depend primarily on integrative processing, whereas explicit tests focus more heavily on elaborative processing. By these assumptions and the idea of TAP, it follows that implicit memory test performance is mediated by study/test overlaps in integrative processing, whereas performance of explicit tests is mediated by study/test overlaps in elaborative processing.A review of the literature shows that research has revealed a great deal about elaborative processing, and that we have much less insight intothe factors that control/guide integrative processing. One widespread assumption is that integrative processing is automatic, and is guided primarily by the data -- the sensory/perceptual properties of the stimuli that are presented for study and test. We have examined this assumption in several recent studies (e.g., Graf & Ryan, 1990; Ryan & Graf, 1992) and were surprised by the findings. They showed that just like elaborative processing, integrative processing is complex and dependent on many factors, including the strategies that are subject initiated and guided (thus, integrative processing not automatic) and the specific cues and requirements that define each study/test condition.We are also conducting investigations into what specific attributes of to - be - remembered targets and target contexts are effective as cues for implicit and explicit memory test performance. …