DEVELOPMENTAL DIFFERENCES IN IMPLICIT AND EXPLICIT MEMORY PERFORMANCE

Performance of preschool, elementary school, and college students was compared on a series of perceptual and conceptual implicit and explici t memory tasks that followed perceptual or conceptual processing durin g study. As expected, performance on the conceptual explicit memory ta sk improved across age groups. In contrast, performance on the percept ual explicit memory task as well as that on both types of implicit mem ory tasks showed no developmental change. Also, perceptual processing during study led to better memory performance than conceptual processi ng for both the perceptual implicit and perceptual explicit tasks and conceptual processing during study led to better memory performance on the conceptual explicit memory task. Performance on the conceptual im plicit memory task, in contrast, was affected equally by both types of study processing. The results are discussed in terms of transfer-appr opriate processing (Roediger & Blaxton, 1987b) and unitization and gro uping processes (Graf & Schacter, 1989). (C) 1998 Academic Press.