Virginia a. rappold and shahin hashtroudi

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 1991, Vol. 17, No. I, 103-114

Copyright 1991 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. D278-7393/91/S3.OO

Does Organization Improve Priming?
Virginia A. Rappold and Shahin Hashtroudi
George Washington University In five experiments, the effects of organization on implicit memory or priming tests were compared withits effects on the explicit memory tests of free and cued recall. Organization was manipulated by varying list structure (blocked vs. random presentation of categorized items) and by instructions. The results showed that organization had parallel effects on the categoryproduction priming test and free- and cued-recall tests; performance was enhanced by organization on both types of tests. It wasalso demonstrated that the effect of organization on priming was limited to the category-production test and was not obtained with the word-identification priming test. These results suggest that performance on implicit and explicit memory tests is similarly affected by experimental manipulations when both types of tests rely on conceptually driven processing. In addition, performance on twoimplicit tests is dissociated when one test relies on conceptually driven processing and the other on data-driven processing.

Recent interest in studying the relations between explicit {e.g., recall and recognition) and implicit (e.g., priming) memory tests has been motivated by the idea that memory is not a single unified system but rather consists of several independent forms. These forms may bedifferentially affected by certain experimental manipulations and by memory disorders such as amnesia (Cohen & Squire, 1980;Tulving, 1983, 1985; Warrington & Weiskrantz, 1982). Although a few studies have reported parallel effects of certain experimental manipulations on implicit and explicit tests (Blaxton, 1989; Graf & Schacter, 1985; Jacoby, 1983a; Jacoby & Dallas, 1981; Roediger & Blaxton, 1987b;Roediger, Weldon, & Challis, 1989), the majority of studies have focused on demonstrating differences rather than similarities between the two types of tests. In addition, most theoretical accounts of the relations between implicit and explicit tests have been formulated primarily to explain the differences between the two types of tests (Cohen & Squire, 1980; Graf & Mandler, 1984; Tulving, 1983;see Schacter, 1987 and Richardson-Klavehn & Bjork, 1988, for reviews). The purpose of the present experiments was to explore the similarities as well as the differences between implicit and explicit tests in their sensitivity to organizational manipulations. One recent theoretical framework that suggests certain similarities between implicit and explicit tests is the transferappropriateprocessing framework that emphasizes the distinction between data-driven and conceptually driven processes (Jacoby, 1983b; Roediger & Blaxton, 1987b; Roediger,

This research was supported by a Biomedical Research Support Grant from the George Washington University to Shahin Hashtroudi. We thank Teresa Blaxton, Roddy Roediger, Betsy Parker, Sharon Mutter, and especially Barbara Schwartz and Sue Fergusonfor their valuable comments on this article. We also thank Peter Graf, Colin MacLeod, and Daniel Schacter for their helpful suggestions for revision. We are grateful to Carol Reisen for her help in analyzing the data and to Sheri Denmark for her help in testing the subjects. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Shahin Hashtroudi, Department of Psychology, George WashingtonUniversity, Washington, DC 20052. 103

Weldon, & Challis, 1989; see also Johnson, 1983). According to this framework, both implicit and explicit memory tests involve a mixture of data-driven and conceptually driven processes. Data-driven processes are guided in large part by the physical features of information, whereas conceptually driven processes are self-initiated activities that are...