Bias Effects in Implicit Memory Tasks

A major focus of recent research in memory has been performance on implicit tasks. The phenomenon of most interest has been repetition priming, the effect that prior exposure to a stimulus has on later perception of the stimulus or on a later decision about the stimulus. Picture naming, word identification, and word production in stem- and fragment-completion tasks all show repetition priming effects. The separation of implicit from explicit memory systems provides one account of this data, but a different theoretical view is proposed here: Repetition-priming effects come about because the processes that perform a task are biased by prior exposure to a stimulus. The processing of the prior stimulus leaves behind by-products, temporary modifications of the processes, which influence later processing. The aim of this article is to demonstrate the potential of this view for developing new theories and for prompting new empirical questions.