Transfer across modality in perceptual implicit memory

We examined whether words studied in one modality (visual or auditory) woul d prime performance in the opposite modality in five different perceptual i mplicit memory tests: auditory perceptual identification, auditory stem com pletion, visual perceptual identification, visual stem completion, and visu al fragment completion. Significant transfer across modality was observed i n ail five tasks. However, a large proportion of the subjects reported usin g explicit retrieval strategies during the implicit tests. Those subjects w ho claimed not to have used explicit retrieval processes during the test ph ase demonstrated transfer across modalities in the stem completion tests an d the perceptual identification tests, but not in the fragment completion t est. The results indicate that implicit visual word-fragment completion is unique, in the sense that it relies exclusively on perceptual memory proces ses, whereas the other tasks rely, in part, on nonperceptual memory process es.