Priming, Procedural Memory, and Conditioning (Implicit) • 161positions of chess pieces in other games. The experts’ attention would therefore be
directed toward identifying these groups. The nonexperts, who did not have this knowl-
edge, were likely to focus their attention differently, looking at the chess pieces indi-
vidually rather than as groups.Priming, Procedural Memory, and Conditioning (Implicit)
When we access explicit memory, we are conscious of doing so. We know we are think-
ing back to relive an earlier experience (episodic memory—Tulving’s “self-knowing” or
“remembering”) or that we are retrieving knowledge about past events or about facts
we have learned (semantic memory—Tulving’s “knowing”). The defi ning characteristic
of implicit memory, in contrast, is that we are not conscious we are using it (see the
right side of Figure 6.6). Implicit memory occurs when some previous experience infl u-
ences our performance on a task, even though we do not consciously remember the
previous experience. We may not even be aware of exactly how we are accomplishing a
particular task. We just do it! (Roediger, 1990; Schacter, 1987; Tulving, 1985). Tulving
describes implicit memory as nonknowing.PRIMING
Priming occurs when the presentation of one stimulus (the priming stimulus) changes
the response to a subsequent test stimulus (the test stimulus), either positively (positive
priming, which causes an increase in speed or accuracy of the response to the test stimu-
lus) or negatively (negative priming, which causes a decrease in the speed or accuracy of
response to the test stimulus). We will focus on positive priming because most research
has studied this type of priming.
One type of positive priming, repetition priming, occurs when the test stimulus
is the same as or resembles the priming stimulus. For example, seeing the word bird
may cause you to respond more quickly to another presentation of the word bird than
to a word you had not seen, even though you may not remember seeing bird earlier.
Conceptual priming occurs when the enhancement caused by the priming stimulus is
based on the meaning of the stimulus. For example, presentation of the word furniture
might cause you to respond faster to a later presentation of the word chair.
Repetition priming and conceptual priming are both considered to be implicit mem-
ory because their effects can occur even though participants may not remember the orig-
inal presentation of the priming stimulus when they are responding to the test stimulus.
You may wonder how we can be sure that a person isn’t remembering the priming
stimulus when responding to the test stimulus. After all, if we present the word bird,
and then later measure how fast a person reacts to another presentation of the word
bird, couldn’t that happen because the person remembers the fi rst time bird was pre-
sented? If the person did remember the initial presentation of bird, then this would be
an example of explicit memory, not implicit memory. Researchers have used a number
of methods to reduce the chances that a person in a priming experiment will remember
the original presentation of the priming stimulus.METHOD Avoiding Explicit Remembering in a Priming Experiment
One way to minimize the chances that a person will remember the presentation of the priming
stimulus is to present the priming stimulus in a task that does not appear to be a memory task.
For example, if the priming stimuli are the names of animals, participants could be presented
with the names and asked to indicate whether the animals would stand more than 2 feet high.
In addition to disguising the purpose of the priming stimulus, researchers have devised
tests that do not directly test memory. An example of such a test is the word completionImplicit Learning
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