MULTINOMIAL MODELING OF IMPLICIT MEMORY P ROCESSES - AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH

In memory research, two methods demonstrating memory effects without a wareness are currently being discussed: (1) The dissociation paradigm refers to the comparison of results relying on direct and indirect mea sures of memory. (2) In the process-dissociation procedure, it is assu med that conscious and unconscious processes make independent contribu tions to task performance and special experimental procedures allow th em to be separated. This paper refers to the problems of measuring unc onscious memory performance. An empirical study of perceptual identifi cation of words and nonwords was conducted, and showed that response b ias and memory without awareness are confounded. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate an alternative approach, the mathematical modeling of cognitive processes. Compared to conventional methods a model-based approach has two essential advantages: On the one hand, multinomial m odeling allows for a separate estimation of a discrimination parameter , a response bias parameter and a parameter for unconscious processes. On the other hand, it ist also possible to test this model statistica lly.