IMPLICIT MEMORY EFFECTS WHEN USING PICTURES WITH CHILDREN AND ADULTS - HYPERMNESIA TOO

Pictorial stimuli were used to investigate implicit- and explicit-memo ry phenomena in 3 experiments. The general procedure involved the pres entation of a series of pictures during a study phase, followed by an implicit-memory test and an explicit-memory test. In the implicit-memo ry test, participants were presented with picture fragments and were i nstructed to write down what the fragment looked like. In the explicit -memory test, participants were asked to make a yes/no recognition dec ision regarding each picture. For children, implicit memory for pictur es was robust when they were tested after a 48-hr interval, but that e ffect declined after I week; a similar implicit-memory effect for pict ures was seen with college students; and the time course of the implic it-memory effect for pictures among college students (all short interv als of less than 1 week-1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 days) produced a more elevat ed implicit-memory performance than during the immediate testing condi tion. Hypermnesia may have been the cause of the increase in memory pe rformance over the short intervals.