Font Size: a A A

Experimental Dissociation Between Implicit And Explicit Memory: The Role Of Attention During Encoding

Posted on:2003-10-26Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:S C LiangFull Text:PDF
GTID:2155360062980667Subject:Basic Psychology
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
The research of implicit memory is a hot topic in contemporary cognitive psychology. In order to explore the law of implicit memory, research workers manipulate all kinds of experimental variables and observe whether experimental dissociation between implicit and explicit memory appears under the influence of these variables. One of these variables is attention during encoding. It is of great importance to investigate the influence of attention during encoding on implicit and explicit memory.In this article, the relationship between attention during encoding and implicit memory was explored in three experiments by using the tasks of word-stem completion and word association. At the same time, task dissociation and process dissociation paradigms were adopted, and college students were used as subjects. In Experiment 1, the variable of attention was manipulated into three levels: focused attention, slightly divided attention and seriously divided attention. The tests of word-stem completion and word-stem cued recall were performed at the end of the experiment. The result showed that, as the degree of divided attention increased, the performance of word-stem cued recall dropped systematically, whereas the value of priming effect dropped only on the level of seriously divided attention. In Experiment 2, almost the same material as Experiment 1 was used , and the condition of focused attention and seriously divided attention was retained. Furthermore, the process dissociation paradigm was adopted to gain the "pure" implicit memory because the implicit memory task used in Experiment 1 may be "polluted" by explicit memory. It was found that divided attention dropped the performance of recollection (explicit memory), but left the performance of automatic retrieval (implicit memory) unaffected. Because using different types of memory tasks may lead to different conclusions, and the tasks used in Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 belong to data-driven memory tasks. Experiment 3 adopted the word association task which belongs to concept-driven memory tasks. Meanwhile, the frequency of word association was introduced as aindependent variable. And indirect test, inclusion test and exclusion test wereperformed in one experiment in order to explore the relationship between attention and implicit memory systematically. The result showed that divided attention reduced the performance of free association and that of recollection, but left the performance of automatic retrieval unaffected.Based on these results, it can be concluded that, 1) Although data-driven and concept-driven memory tasks are used, the same result was gained. Under the influence of attention, experimental dissociation between implicit and explicit memory appeared. That is , explicit memory was influenced by attention, whereas implicit memory was intact. 2) The result of this research showed that implicit and explicit memory possessed different information processing features. The processing of implicit memory almost need not attention resource, whereas the processing of explicit memory depends heavily on attention resource. 3) It is of great importance to use task dissociation and process dissociation paradigm simultaneously. By doing this , the validity of the research can be promoted. 4)There are no sexual difference both in implicit and explicit memory.
Keywords/Search Tags:implicit memory, explicit memory, focused attention, divided attention
PDF Full Text Request
Related items