Conscious and Nonconscious Processing of Visual Object Identity

Priming as implicit memory Recognizing a perceptual stimulus improves with familiarity. This experience specific facilitation is termed priming.In a typical priming experiment, subjects are initially exposed to a set of briefly presented stimuli in the prime block and their performance in naming, for example, is recorded (usually reaction times and correct responses). In a subsequent test block, subjects are presented with either the same stimuli or stimuli that have some defined relationship to the prime stimuli. Any improvement that is specific to the stimulus is taken as a measure of priming. Priming is considered an implicit type of memory because it does not involve explicit recollection of previous experience. It is believed to exist as an independent mechanism, while closely interacting with other memory systems (Tulving & Schacter 1990). Amnesic patients, for example, can show almost intact priming while their explicit recognition memory (as measured in an old/new judgment task) has been severely impaired (Weiskrantz & Warrington 1970; Wanington & Weiskrantz 1974; Cave & Squire 1992).In other types of experiments, it has been shown that elaborating the study material improved explicit memory (e.g., measured by a cued recall of stem completions),l but not priming (Graf & Mandler 1984). Priming and explicit memory have also been suggested to have different retention time courses (Jacoby 1983). Priming of object naming can last 48 weeks after a single exposure to a picture (Cave 1997), and priming of word completions can even last as long as 16 months (Sloman, Hayman, Ohta, Law & Tulving 1988).