ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RECOGNITION FAMILIARITY AND PERCEPTUAL FLUENCY - EVIDENCE FOR DISTINCT MNEMONIC PROCESSES

Fluent reprocessing of perceptual aspects of recently experienced stim uli is thought to support repetition priming effects on implicit perce ptual memory tests. Although behavioral and neuropsychological dissoci ations demonstrate that separable mnemonic processes and neural substr ates mediate implicit and explicit test performance, dual-process theo ries of memory posit that explicit recognition memory judgments may be based on familiarity derived from the same perceptual fluency that yi elds perceptual priming. Here we consider the relationship between fam iliarity-based recognition memory and implicit perceptual memory. A se lect review of the literature demonstrates that the fluency supporting implicit perceptual memory is functionally and anatomically distinct from that supporting recognition memory. In contrast to perceptual flu ency, recognition familiarity is more sensitive to conceptual than to perceptual processing, and does not depend on modality-specific sensor y cortices. Alternative possible relationships between familiarity in explicit memory and fluency in implicit memory are discussed. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V, All rights reserved.