Influence of Priming Conditions on the Performance of the Implicit Memory
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Introduction
The implicit memory is commonly known as the unconscious memory that utilizes the past
events and experiences to create images without necessarily thinking about them. Past
experiences enable the function and performance of the implicit memory regardless of the period
back in time these experiences happened. Procedural memory is part of the implicit memory that
makes it possible for an individual to perform many of the days to day activities such as riding a
bicycle or walking without having to think about the activities. The procedural memory is
recognized as the largest subset of the implicit memory, and it depends on the basal ganglia and
the cerebellum (Parkin, 2016). The procedural memory majorly involves learning new motor
skills. The other section or subset of the implicit memory is the priming memory which involves
using stimuli such as words and pictures to recognize other stimuli such as words and picture in
the future. For example, one remembers grass using the color green.
Implicit memory tests
Researchers use implicit memory to refer to the emotional activation of cases that do not involve
the conscious recall of a memory. It is, therefore, more difficult to demonstrate the existence of
the implicit than it is to demonstrate explicit memory that is a conscious memory. Researchers
have come up with many different tests to demonstrate the implicit memory. Researchers
investigating implicit memory give the participants a series of tasks to study and are later given
the same tasks but in fragments and instructed to complete the tasks. In some tests, the
information given to the subjects is incoherent to test if the subjects will remember the
information consciously (Greenwald & Banaji, 2017). Some of the examples of implicit memory
tasks include typing on a keyboard, brushing teeth, dialing a phone, recalling rules of a game,
buttoning a shirt, cycling a bicycle, performing simple cooking tasks, and recalling words to a
familiar song or a poem. Researchers have narrowed down the implicit memory tests into two
distinct types; the perceptual and conceptual memory tests.
Perceptual memory tests
These implicit memory tests evaluate the performance of the perceptual system by introducing
the impoverished test stimuli to which the participants are required to provide responses.
Example of the perceptual memory test is word fragment completion, word stem completion, and
word completion. When pictures are used study material in the perceptual memory tests, the
participants are provided with fragmented forms of the pictures through a series of successively
fuller fragments until the participants can identify the contents of the picture.
The measure of the perceptual memory test tasks is priming. The factors affecting priming on
perceptual implicit memory tests are different from the factors that affect performance on
explicit memory tests. For example, modality has little or no impact on explicit memory tests
while it has a great impact on implicit memory tests (Schacter, & Norman, 2014).
Conceptually driven tests
These are memory tests that depend on the meaning of events or concepts being remembered,
and the important aspect of the tests is the meaning of the events rather than the event itself. For
example, generating a word generally depends on the meaning of the given the word than the
reading of the word itself. The general knowledge test is the most common conceptual implicit
memory test (Schacter, & Norman, 2014).
Method
Forty-one participants were involved in the recognition implicit memory test that involved word
identification. The main objective of the research study was to assess if people were faster in
recognizing words with recent words as compared to non-primed words. The participants were
used to test the hypothesis for the study which was that people would be faster than they have
recently been exposed to in the first part of the experiment. Six men and thirty-five women aged
between the age of 18 and 39 were involved in the experiment.
Results
The time the participants took to recognize the words the recently primed words were collected
and recorded before priming and after priming. The following table shows the summary of the
descriptive statistics where the periods are given in mean time per trial in milliseconds.
Table 1: summary descriptive statistics
Statistics
Mean
Standard Error
Median
Mode
Standard Deviation
Sample Variance
Kurtosis
Skewness
Range
Minimum
Maximum
Sum
Count
OLD
3713.411
73.07835
3624.852
#N/A
467.9298
218958.3
1.95221
1.07144
2421.302
2784.16
5205.462
152249.8
41
NEW
4059.626
62.88285
3929.731
#N/A
402.6467
162124.3
1.434689
1.243812
1779.546
3597.704
5377.25
166444.7
41
A paired sample t-test on the individual mean times for the condition before priming (Old
condition) and after priming (New condition) was done, and the following results were obtained;
old (M = 3,713.41, SD = 467.93) and New (M = 4,059.63, SD = 402.65). The t-test table for the
two means is shown in table 2 below
t-Test: Paired Two Sample for Means
Mean
Variance
Observations
Pearson Correlation
Hypothesized Mean
Difference
df
t Stat
P(T<=t) one-tail
t Critical one-tail
P(T<=t) two-tail
t Critical two-tail
Old
New
3713.411 4059.626
218958.3 162124.3
41
41
0.864412
0
40
-9.42242
5.22E-12
1.683851
1.04E-11
2.021075
This information can be visualized in figure 1 below
5000
4500
Reaction Time (ms)
4000
3500
3000
old
2500
new
2000
1500
1000
500
0
Condition
There was a significant difference between conditions groups as shown in the t-test results (t (40)
= 9.422, p< .05).
Discussion and conclusion
The goal of the research study was to assess how fast an individual recognizes words before and
after priming conditions. The t-test showed that the speed of recognizing words after priming
(New) was higher than the speed of remembering the words before priming (Old). The results of
the study were in line with the literature on the influence of priming on implicit memory. The
performance of the participant in recognizing the words was significantly improved by the
priming condition and this resulted to the differences in the means between the old and new
mean times recorded for recognizing the words. From the results of the study, we accept the
hypothesis of the study to conclude that people will be faster at identifying words they have been
exposed to in the priming condition when compared to identifying words they have not seen
before. Therefore, priming improves the performance of implicit memory.
References
Greenwald, A. G., & Banaji, M. R. (2017). The implicit revolution: Reconceiving the relation
between conscious and unconscious. American Psychologist, 72(9), 861.
Parkin, A. J. (2016). Memory: Phenomena, experiment and theory. Routledge.
Schacter, D. L., & Norman, K. A. (2014). Implicit Memory, Explicit Memory, and False
Recollection: A Cognitive Neuroscience Perspective. In Implicit Memory and
Metacognition (pp. 241-270). Psychology Press.
Rosén, A., Yi, J., Kirsch, I., Kaptchuk, T. J., Ingvar, M., & Jensen, K. B. (2017). Effects of
subtle cognitive manipulations on placebo analgesia–An implicit priming study.
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