Memory Systems: Autobiographical, Implicit, and Explicit Functions

Posted on Nov 18, 2025 in Psychology and Sociology

Autobiographical Memory

Autobiographical memory refers to the conscious and active remembering of events related to one’s own life and personal past.

Traditional Procedure: Galton (1883)

  • Requires a keyword and date to prompt a personal experience related to that word.
  • The quality of memory is assessed by its vividness and level of detail.
  • Problem: This method is considered too open.

Modern Procedures

Questionnaires (e.g., Baddeley)

Ask for personal information and autobiographical incidents from different periods of the subject’s life.

Diary Entries

An expensive procedure where relevant details are recorded in a journal.

Factors Influencing Forgetting (Oblivion)

Forgetting is influenced by:

  • Uniqueness of the event.
  • Emotional charge of the event.
  • Frequency of review.
  • Wealth of personal recovery keys (e.g., dating from public events).

Recovery of Autobiographical Information (Willem, 1986)

Information cues regarding who, what, and where are powerful recovery keys. The cue when, when used alone, did not provide help.

Distortion of Autobiographical Memories

Autobiographical memories are not error-free; distortions and failures follow predictable patterns. Factors contributing to distortion include:

  • Intrinsic memorability of events.
  • Subjective importance of a certain event.
  • The number and wealth of memory keys available.

Recovery Failure: Feeling of Knowing (Tip-of-the-Tongue)

The “tip-of-the-tongue” phenomenon (Brown and McNeil, 1966) occurs when individuals can provide information about the precise search term, even if they cannot recall the term itself.

Two Types of Blocking (Locks)

  1. Blocking Inference Words: Failure to identify the target memory, sometimes released by external cues (“foreign keys”).
  2. Remembering Intermediate Words: Intermediate words may either help or interfere with the internal strategy for effective recovery.

Massive Loss of Information (Infantile Amnesia)

The tendency to evoke older memories is more difficult. Potential causes include:

  • Neurological development/outcome.
  • Years of language development.
  • Context dependency (the child’s perception differs from the adult’s).

Neuropsychological Evidence

Studies of retrograde amnesia show impairment in autobiographical memory of events and low professional skills, but often good recognition ability. There is typically greater impairment for recent events.

Explicit and Implicit Memory

Classical Memory Tests

Classical memory tests explicitly refer to and demand the recovery of a specific prior experience.

Non-Classical Tests (Since the 1980s)

These tasks do not require the subject to consciously recover specific study events. Instead, memory of previous experiences is inferred from performance facilitation.

Core Definitions

Explicit memory requires conscious recovery, while implicit memory task performance is facilitated by previous experiences without the subject consciously resorting to them.

Characteristics of Explicit Memory

  • Requires attention and care to learn a new episode.
  • Effectiveness is related to the depth of information processing.
  • Learning depends on the frequency and distribution of presentations.
  • Recovery requires conscious or controlled effort by the subject.

Characteristics of Implicit Memory

  • Does not require the ability to recall a specific learning experience.
  • It depends on the level of depth of information processing.
  • Learning is independent of the frequency and distribution of presentations.
  • The ability to learn is influenced if the test stimuli presented are physically identical.

Priming

The influence of a stimulus on the subsequent performance of the processing system is called “priming.”

Age Effects

With age, implicit memory remains relatively constant, whereas explicit memory performance in the elderly is typically lower than that of younger adults.

Dissociations Between Implicit and Explicit Memory

Dissociations between implicit and explicit memory are observed across several factors:

  • Coding Level: Explicit memory performance is strongly influenced by the coding level or type of stimulus in the study phase (e.g., semantic processing). Implicit memory facilitation shows a very weak effect without the benefit of semantic processing.
  • Mode of Exposure: Changing the mode of exposure dramatically reduces the performance of implicit memory but not explicit memory.
  • Study-Test Phases: Changes in study-test phases (context/format) have little influence on explicit memory but significantly affect implicit memory.
  • Retention Interval: Long delays have few negative effects on implicit memory, whereas explicit tests are severely affected by the passage of time.