Elementary school children's explicit and implicit memory for faces of preschool classmates

This study examined elementary school children's memories for faces of pres chool classmates after a 3-year interval. Children recognized their former classmates at an above-chance level, but their level of recognition was sig nificantly lower than the level shown by the preschool teachers. Children s howed implicit memory of classmates by making fewer errors while performing a face-matching task in classmate conditions than in control conditions. H owever, the classmate advantage on the face-matching task was found to decr ease across the 3-year interval. Several findings in this study pointed to functional independence of implicit and explicit memory (e.g., children's e xplicit recognition memory, but not implicit memory, was related to amount of time children spent together at preschool).