Past events shape our present thinking and behavior in incalculable ways. Sometimes, we try to recall past episodes, while at other times, we act upon thoughts that seem to have popped into our minds of their own accord. When experiences affect our thinking and behavior unconsciously, this is called implicit memory.
Unconscious or ‘ implicit memory is probably best explained by contrasting it with conscious or ‘ explicit memory. For example, if a friend says, ‘Do you remember the man who sat opposite us on the train on Monday? ‘you might pause to think for a moment, then consciously experience a series of visual, auditory, and other sensory recollections. You may remember dashing for the train and then squeezing yourself into a seat. Then you may remember the bearded stranger sitting facing you who was engaged in an increasingly frantic pocket-by-pocket search for his ticket. This explicit remembering of a time, place, and person fits with our usual understanding of the way memory works.
Inexplicable feelings
But past experiences can have a more subtle influence on our thoughts and behavior. Imagine you meet a new colleague for a long time and, before learning anything of consequence about him, feel an immediate dislike for him. This might well be a case of implicit memory at work. The new colleague who stirs up unfathomable feelings of antipathy may bear a resemblance to someone else whom you once disliked – perhaps a teacher who had a similar way of speaking. Although you have not made a conscious connection, the resemblance triggers feelings that affect your reactions. Implicit memory is supplying the reason why you feel hostile, but all you experience is the feeling itself.
Procedures and Priming
Implicit memory also underlies the procedural skills that we develop over a lifetime. For example, when you learn to dance or swim, you find that you know how to do these dungs without being able to say much about what you actually do. Similarly, most of us can judge whether a sentence is grammatical or not, even if we cannot explicitly state the rules of grammar. We learn them through examples and remember them implicitly.
One way of studying implicit memory is to present people with two apparently unrelated tasks and see whether the first has an unconscious influence on the second. For example, people are given a list of random words to study, such as miracle, violin, cataract, and baggage, and asked to return for tests a few days later. These tests tend to involve filling in miss ing letters to make words such as m- r- – r- m and – v- c- – o, which may appear too difficult to solve, but the correct answers seem to come to mind quite e easily for equally complex w rds such as c- ta— tan d m -r- -1-. This is because of the earlier presentation of cataracts and miracle ‘primes’ people to see these words. People generally do not remember that the words were presented to them in an earlier list.
Priming occurs in many everyday situations. For example, if a person drops an unusual phrase or word into a conversation, there is a good chance that someone else in the group will use it later without being aware of repeating it. Called conversational plagiarism, this is an unconscious form of copying that is an example of implicit Priming that occurs in many everyday situations. For example, if a person drops an unusual phrase or word into a conversation, there is a good chance that someone else in the group will use it later without being aware of repeating it. Called conversational plagiarism, this is an unconscious form of copying that is an example of implicit memory. Written plagiarism can also have an implicit memory element: writers have been known to reproduce lines of verse and even duplicate entire plots of novels with unconscious memory of acquiring the material from existing works.
Unconscious Early Memories
Children at junior school are generally poor at recognizing photos of former playmates from nursery school because they were only two or three years old when they knew them. Most people do not have explicit memories of events before the age of four. However, a study of junior-school children has shown that faces not recognized consciously can still be recognized implicitly. As the children looked at pictures of nursery school friends, they measured their galvanic skin response (GSR) – a measure of skin moisture that is the basis of ‘lie-detector ‘ tests.’ Although the children said they did not recall the faces, their GSR rose to indicate that they did recognize their former friends at some unconscious level.
