Process dissociation procedure

Published Date: 23 Mar 2015

Introduction

Schifrin and Schneider (1977, in Eysenck and Keane, 2005) distinguished between automatic and controlled memory processes. They claimed automatic process is not limited in capacity or requires attention, whereas the opposite is true for controlled processes.

Graf and Schacter (1987) tagged automatic processing as the process underlying implicit memory while conscious processing reflects explicit memory. They described implicit memory as test performance that is facilitated without conscious recollection of previous episode. On the other hand, explicit memory as defined by Schacter (1987) refers to "conscious recollection of recently presented, as expressed on traditional tests of free recall, cued recall and recognition".

Explicit memory research are dominated by direct tests like free recall, cued recall, and recognition test are tests whereas implicit memory research is dominated by indirect tests such as word stem completion (WSC), word fragment completion (WFC) where participants are required to complete a word with a degraded cue (e.g. Banana, B_ n_a or Ban_ for word stem). This study adopted Schacter and Graf's (1986) implicit and explicit memory terms. The term priming (the facilitated use of previous information without conscious recollection - Schacter and Graf, 1986) is also used occasionally to describe the type of facilitation brought about by implicit memory.

The dissociation between implicit and explicit memory have been evidenced by cognitive and neuropsychological research (Schacter and Graf, 1986; Sloman, Hayman, Ohta, Law and Tulving, 1988; Gabrieli, Fleischman, Keane, Reminger and Morrell, 1995; and Jacoby, 1983). Findings reported here have come from studies of amnesia patients (Fleischman, Vaidya, Lange and Gabrieli, 1997), attention (Mulligan and Hartman, 1996), and presentation modality (Graf, Shimamura, and Squire, 1985).

Implicit and explicit memory

Studies investigating neurological disorders such as amnesia, multiple sclerosis and epilepsy have evidenced the dissociation by comparing memory test performance of these patients, to that of healthy, control patients. Amnesia patients have normal perceptual, linguistics and intellectual functioning but have inability to remember recent event and new information (Schacter, 1987). So, they are seriously impaired in standard tests of explicit recall and recognition.

These characteristics were supported by findings of Warrington and Weiskrantz (1968, in Schacter, 1987) who reported that while amnesic patients showed excellent retention of studied words when asked to complete a word stem, they failed to recognize the same words in recognition tasks. Graf, Squire and Mandler (1984) also reported similar findings. Amnesia patients in their study showed impairments when they were told to use word stems as cues for previous studied item, i.e. given explicit instruction but their performance when given implicit instructions (to complete with first word that comes to mind), was comparable to healthy patients'.

Also in support was Gabrieli et al. (1995) and Fleischman et al. (1997) also reported similar findings when they studied MS, a patient who had undergone surgery to remove his right occipital lobe for treatment of epilepsy. Gabrieli at al. (1995) compared MS's performance to that of other participants on perceptual identification and recognition tests. MS showed no evidence of priming but his recognition memory was intact. However, MS showed priming when tested on category production, a different type of implicit test.

Studies of patients with multiple sclerosis have also informed our knowledge of the dissociation. When matched to control participants, these patients showed impaired performance on tests of immediate recall, despite being comparable to control patients in MS age and verbal intelligent (Grant et al. 1984). Scarrabelotti and Carrol (1998) also compared multiple sclerosis (MS) patients to control patients on a word stem completion and a verbal learning test. They found the same amount of priming in MS and control groups but recall of verbal list was significantly lower in MS group when participants were given explicit instructions. On the hand, recognition was intact, suggesting that these patients may not be exhibiting memory dissociation per se. Two sets of findings supporting this notion are reported below.

Blum, Yonelinas, Luks, Newitt, Oh, Lu, Nelson, Goodkin, and Pelletier (2002) reported evidence suggesting that observed effects may be task and disorder effects rather than dissociation effects. Blum et al. examined patients with different subgroups of MS (Primary Progressive (PPMS), Relapsing Remitting (RRMS), and Secondary Progressive (SPMS) MS subgroups). All groups exhibited free recall deficits but only RRMS and SPMS showed normal pattern of priming.

These neurological evidence are also supported by studies of healthy patients. Of these studies are those investigating the effect of attention.

ATTENTION

Attention is another variable which has been shown to evidence dissociation between implicit and explicit memory. Divided attention paradigm is used to study its effect on both types of memory. In divided attention paradigm, attention is manipulated by asking participants to perform a concurrent task (Wolters and Prinsen, 1997).

Graf and Schacter (1987) investigated the effect of interference on both types of memory using unrelated word pairs. The theoretical assumption of these authors was that unrelated words have no unitized representations in long-term memory in the same way that pairs of related words do (e.g. bread and cake). Thus, any effects observed on implicit and explicit memory will be based on new associations formed during study trials and will not be confounded by the possibility of participants' strategy such as elaborative encoding. Elaborative encoding is the deep processing of information that involves the use of different strategy such as forming association, grouping information or using mnemonics to make information more memorable (Colman, 2006). Graf and Schacter (1987) found interference impaired performance on explicit recall (as shown by cued recall, pair matching and modified free-recall tests) but have no effect on WSC. Sloman, et al. (1988) also reported impaired performance on recognition task when there was interference but found no such effect on primed fragment completion test. Similar findings was also reported by Mulligan and Hartman (1996) who compared word fragment completion and category exemplar tests to their explicit equivalent, word fragment cued recall and category-cued recall test. Mulligan and Hartman (1996) found divided attention at encoding reduced performance on both explicit equivalents but there was no impaired performance on the implicit tests.

In contrast to these authors that have reported no effect of divided attention on implicit memory, Graf and Schacter (1985) and Rajaram, Srinivas and Travers (2001) reported reduced performance on implicit memory when attention was divided. Wolters and Prinsen (1997) suggested that observing an effect of attention on implicit memory may depend on the difficulty of distraction task used and the type of implicit test. This suggestion was supported by their finding that difficult distraction test interferes with performance on implicit memory as it would be expected for explicit memory. Mulligan and Hartman (1996) also reported divided attention effect on implicit test of category exemplar production, suggesting dissociation within implicit tests itself.

Reports of divided attention effect on implicit memory test or lack of it can be accounted for by different methodological procedure used by these authors. Rajaram et al. (2001) used a Stroop task whereas other studies compared an indirect test (usually WSC but WFC was also used) with a direct test. This notion is supported by Wolter and Prinsen's (1997). When Wolter and Prinsen (1997) investigated the effect of divided attention comparing cued recall test to word stem completion, they reported a detrimental effect of attention on implicit memory. However, when process dissociation was used, this effect disappeared.

Above findings suggest that explicit memory is generally affected by attention whereas finding an effect of attention on implicit memory is dependent on distraction task and methodology adopted. Other variables (e.g. study processing method and presentation modality) have showed clear cut evidence. Presentation modality is discussed below.

PRESENTATION MODALITY

Presentation modality, the mode of stimulus presentation during study or at test is another factor that dissociates implicit and explicit memory. Jacoby and Dallas (1981) found that changing modality of presentation from study (auditory) to test (visual) strongly affects priming effects on word identification but have little effects on recognition performance. This was supported by Graf, Shimamura and Squire's (1985) findings when they studied priming effects on WSC and cued recall performance. Graf et al. (1085) tested amnesia and control patients on free recall and word completion test where two of the trials were presented visually and the other two auditorily. On the other hand, test was always visually presented. In the free recall condition, across all participants, changing test modality has no effect, suggesting that changing test modality does affect explicit memory. Nevertheless, changing test modality of the word completion test revealed a different finding. In this condition, performance was higher for words that was studied and tested in the same modality (32.9%) in comparison to words studied and tested under different modality (20.9%). Roediger III and Blaxton (1987) also reported that priming was better for visual presentation and it was also higher,even after a week, when the fragments were presented in the same way as study.

Although evidence described above (neurological, attention and presentation modality) support the distinction between implicit and explicit memory, some similarities between boty types of memory have been reported.

Sloman et al (1988), Graf and Mandler (1984) and Schacter and Graf (1986) all reported evidence suggesting similarity between implicit and explicit memory. Sloman et al. (1988) found evidence of linear forgetting in word fragment completion test which is similar to they type of forgetting usually observed in recognition tests. Similarly, increasing length of study list affects both word fragment and recognition test and Graf and Mandler (1984) reported that both types of memory decayed at a similar rate - word stem completion and recognition test decayed after two hours and. Graf and Mandler also reported that both memory types are affected by practice effect and repetition of study lists significantly increase performance on both tests.

Using two associative elaboration tasks (sentence-generation and word generation) to investigate the effects of elaboration on implicit and explicit memory, Schacter and Graf (1986) showed that both types of memory benefits from elaborative processes.

So far, studies have supported or refuted distinctions between implicit and explicit memory and other have shown similarities between them. These findings are accounted for by three popular theories; processing theory (Jacoby, 1983), activation theory (Mandler, 1980; Graf and Mandler 1984) and multiple memory system theory (Tulving, 1983 not referenced yet).

THEORIES OF DISSOCIATION EFFECT

The processing theory (Jacoby, 1983; Roediger and Blaxton, 1987) relies on the assumption that both implicit and explicit memory have different processing demands with implicit assumed to be governed by data-driven processes and explicit by conceptual processes. Conceptually driven processes involve strategies such as elaboration whereas data-driven are governed by information presented in test materials (Schacter, 1987). This account stressed that test such as WSC relies on the similarities between study information and test information whereas tests like free recall relies on elaborative processes. The theory argues that though both may have conceptual makings, they are primarily driven by different processes (Roediger and Blaxton 1987). This theory is supported by Jacoby (1983) who reported that perceptual identification was better at recall if participants had read word pairs (e.g. hot... cold) than when they generated them from antonyms (hot...), where as the opposite was true for recognition test.

In contrast, activation theory claimed that performance observed on implicit memory is a result of a readily available temporary activation of pre-existing representations or knowledge structures (Graf and Mandler 84, Mandler 80). This activation is assumed to occur on its own without any reference to the relevance between test and study and without elaborative processing; therefore, its contribution cannot be referenced to explicit remembering (Schacter, 1987).

Finally, the multiple memory system put forward by Tulving (1983 in Schacter, 1987) explained the dissociation in terms of underlying differences between episodic and semantic memory. Tulving argued performance on implicit memory test such as word stem completion is similar to performance on semantic memory tests, where participants use pre-existing knowledge. Performance on explicit test is however, comparable to that of episodic memory where they are required to remember recent events.

These theories can account for one aspect of the dissociation or another, but there are also findings they are unable to explain.

The processing account can explain study-test interaction effects such as that reported by Jacoby (1983) and Rajaram and Roediger (1993) but it is unable to explain Schacter and Graf's (1986) findings that implicit memory for newly formed associations depends on some degree of elaboration. Likewise, the memory account is able to explain memory performance observed in patients of neurological disorder but cannot account for why amnesic patients do no show priming for non-words (Schacter, 1987). The activation theory is unable to account for findings of Sloman et al. (1988) that reported evidence of priming over days and weeks (Schacter, 1987) but can account for evidence of rapid decay reported above by Graf and Mandler (1984) and Sloman et al. (1988)

As well as differences between implicit and explicit memory, there is also proposed difference between encoding and retrieval processes in explicit memory, a topic that is briefly discussed below.

DIVIDED ATTENTION IN ENCODING AND RETRIEVAL

Besides the dissociation between explicit and implicit memory, divided attention paradigm has also been used to investigate the difference between encoding and retrieval processes in memory. Theories of forgetting such as encoding specificity principle (Tulving, 1983) implied that retrieval and encoding processes are the similar. Tulving's encoding specificity principle claimed studied items are encoded in a specific way with reference to the context in which it was studied (Eysenck and Keane, 2005). Successful retrieval is therefore based on matching of appropriate cue to the memory trace. This also means that performance under a memory test is directly related to the similarity between information presented at study and information available at retrieval (Eysenck and Keane, 2005). Tulving's theory is supported by a research carried out by Roediger and Tulving (1979) where participants were asked to either recall whole study list or partially recall them by asking them to exclude some information. Roediger and Tulving (1979) reported that instruction to exclude part of the list did not improve recall of the remainder, leading them to conclude that successful retrieval depend on the similarity between study and test information. However, this is not always the case, as shown by various studies discussed below.

Baddeley, Lewis, Eldridge, and Thomson (1984) studied the effect of attention on memory using two tasks to reduce attention. They found reduced attention to strongly affect encoding but have little effect on retrieval. This led them to conclude that retrieval processes are automatic. This was later replicated by Craik, Govoni, Naveh-Benjamin and Anderson (1996) using three experimental tasks: free recall, paired-associate learning and recognition memory task. Craik et al. (1996) reported reduced performance in free recall and paired-associate learning when attention was divided but the effect on dividing attention effect at retrieval was not as much as that observed at encoding. Craik et al. (1996) also that though divided attention have little effect of retrieval; there was a substantial increase in concurrent task reaction time at retrieval than at encoding, where reaction time was only relatively slowed. Reports from Naveh-Benjamin, Craik, Perretta and Tonev (2000) also supported Baddeley et al. (1984) and Craik et al.'s (1996) findings. Craik et al. (2000) reported a large reduction in performance when attention was divided at encoding but found no such effect when attention was divided at retrieval. As well as reporting reduced performance at encoding, Naveh-Benjamin et al. (2000) reported an increase in secondary task cost. They reached the same conclusion as Baddeley et al. (1984); that retrieval processes are protected but at a cost of attention resources. Other studies that reached the same conclusion include Naveh-Benjamin, Craik, Gavrilescu and Anderson, (2000) and Naveh-Benjamin, Kilb, and Fisher, T. (2006).

Despite the compelling evidence discussed above, Fernandes and Moscovitch (2000) argued that the effect of divided attention on retrieval depends on the type of distracting tasks used. They claimed that retrieval and encoding processes involve different systems when attention is divided and finding an effect of divided attention at retrieval depends on the concurrent task used. They claimed when attention is divided at retrieval, the concurrent tasks and memory compete for representational systems whereas when attention is divided at encoding, memory and concurrent task compete for general resources. For this reason, to observe an effect at retrieval, distraction task must be competing for the same system (i.e. observing an effect at retrieval depends on the similarity of both memory and distraction task). On the other hand, any concurrent task which uses the same resources as encoding processes would produce a reduced performance at encoding. They supported their claims with findings that dividing attention at encoding produced large reduction regardless of the distracting tasks (digit monitoring, word monitoring, and word recognition) but an effect of divided attention was only observed when a word-based distraction task was used. However, they also reported increased demand of attention resources at retrieval in comparison to encoding processes.

Critically, one problem with Fernandes and Moscovitch study is that their distraction tasks may have caused additional memory load which could account for their findings. This problem was dealt with by Fernandes and Moscovitch (2002) who investigated whether a word based distraction task that involved no memory load would have the same effect on retrieval as was reported in their earlier research. Despite using a divided attention task that does not load memory, they reported similar findings. This was also evidenced by Fernandes and Moscovitch (2003) who also concluded that retrieval processes is protected and obligatory unless a task that shares the same representational system is used. Though studies above have generally leant towards the idea that retrieval process is protected, findings from other experimental design have yielded conflicting result. Using the psychological refractory period (PRP) design, where stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) of both tasks are varied to separate them, Carrier and Pashler (1995) found that reaction time for cued recall test was slower at shortest SOA than at longest SOA. Carrier and Pashler concluded this mean memory retrieval was postponed for the completion of concurrent task. The exact opposite should have been found is indeed retrieval processes are protected. Rohrer and pashler (2004) also suggested the possible bearing the nature of concurrent could have on retrieval process. Their finding is reported as part of the study's discussion.

There is no doubt research reported above have immensely informed our knowledge. Critically, however there is a problem with the methodological procedure used in many studies. Jacoby (1991) argued that these studies reported a task dissociation effect rather than a processing effect. Jacoby (1991) claimed that comparing implicit and explicit tests and taking observed values as an indicator of process dissociation does not provide a pure measure of the dissociation as this type of comparison is easily contaminated by conscious processes which may bias observed automatic processes effect. Schacter (1987) explained that when comparing a direct task to an indirect test as done by many of these research, there is no evidence to suggest that participants were not using strategic processes when they are not suppose to or that automatic processes did not contribute to their direct test performances. To counter this problem of conscious contamination, Jacoby (1991) proposed the process dissociation procedure (PDP).

PROCESS DISSOCIATION PROCEDURE (PDP)

The PDP separates contributions of automatic and controlled uses of memory by using recollected information in opposite ways to compare performance under inclusion and exclusion condition. Estimates of implicit and explicit memory are then derived from performances under these conditions.

Under inclusion condition, for example, in a word completion test, participants are instructed to use previously seen words as cues. If however, they cannot remember previously seen words, they are instructed to complete the stems with any that comes to mind. Under exclusion condition however, the instruction is slightly different; participants still need to use previously seen stems but only as a guide because the instruction here is to complete the stem with any word that comes to mind with the exception of the one they have seen (Hudson and Robertson, 2005). Following these instructions, it is assumed that conscious recollection and automatic processes are used under inclusion condition but the probability of completing word stem under exclusion condition results from the use of automatic processes (Curran and Hintzman, 1995). The procedure uses equations summarized below:

Inclusion = R + (1 - R) A.......(1)

Exclusion = (1 - R) A...... (2)

Thus R (explicit memory) = Inclusion - Exclusion

And

A (implicit memory) = Exclusion/(1 - R)

(Curran and Hintman, 1995)

PDP assumed that the probability of conscious recollection and automatic processes in the inclusion condition is the same as the exclusion condition but automatic processes and conscious recollection are considered to be stochastically independent (Curran and Hintzman, 1995) as given by equations 3 and 4.

This procedure has been successfully investigated by comparing it to studies using single task. For example, Jacoby (1991) compared findings from PDP to findings from single tasks and found that PDP does indeed provide a 'pure', task dissociation free estimate of implicit and explicit memory. Similarly, Toth, Reingold and Jacoby (1994) also compared PDP findings and those from single tests studies. They reported that task dissociation procedures are contaminated by conscious processes and that PDP showed no self-generation effect or differential effects of semantic or non-semantic processing. Wolters and Prinsen (1997) reported reduced performance on both implicit and explicit memory under different conditions using task dissociation procedure but when they ruled out conscious contamination using process dissociation procedure, they found divided attention affect on explicit but not implicit memory.

Although the procedure seem well supported, some studies (e.g. Curran and Hintzman, 1995; Stern, McNaught-Davis and Barker, 2003; and Horton, Wilson, Vonk, Kirby and Nielsen, 2005) has reported evidence suggesting flaws in the assumptions made by the procedure.

Curran and Hintzman (1995) showed flaws in the procedure's assumption of independence between inclusion and exclusion under various manipulations. Curran and Hintzman reported direct evidence of correlations between R and A that goes against assumptions of equations 1 - 4. Their result also suggested that participants also assumed strategies other those instructed by the procedure. Horton et al. (2005) also reported that in comparison to speeded response procedure, estimates of automatic memory retrieval from process dissociation procedure were consistently lower with the exception of when experimental condition yielded low conscious retrieval.

Most studies of implicit memory tested the effect of divided attention at encoding. One aim of the present study is to investigate the effect of divided attention on implicit memory when attention is divided at retrieval using a procedure that eliminates conscious contamination. Another aim of this study is to investigate whether retrieval processes in explicit memory is still obligatory even when there is little chance of conscious contamination that may have confounded previous findings and if this asymmetry reported by previous studied exists in implicit memory. These aims are investigated using Jacoby's (1991) process dissociation procedure. The final aim of this study is to compare performances on implicit and explicit memory.

Using PDP, the study predicts findings similar to that of Mulligan and Hartman (1996). Therefore, this study predicts that dividing attention either encoding or retrieval will have no effect of implicit memory. However, divided attention at encoding is expected to cause detrimental effect of explicit memory whereas divided attention at retrieval is expected to be protected as reported by Craik et al. (1996). Subsequently, time spent during divided attention at retrieval is expected to be significantly higher than that of divided attention at encoding (Craik et al. 2000).

Curran and Hintzman(1995) claimed that assumption of independence claimed by the procedure is violated by participants obtaining a perfect recollection score ( R = 1). They argued that when this happens, estimates of automatic processes is undefined. Equation 4 also becomes problematic if exclusion scores = 0. Curran and Hintzman claimed that in this case, equation 4 becomes invalid because it is no longer scaled by level of R. Jacoby et al (1993) however, proposed that this problem can be overcome by excluding participants with zero exclusion scores. To this end, this study aim to compare estimates of automatic and conscious recollection using original PDP equations as proposed by Jacoby (1991) with adjusted estimates (Jacoby et al., 1993).

Experiment overview

The experiment used the process dissociation procedure (PDP) to examine effect of divided attention (DA) on implicit and explicit memory using word stem completion test (WSC). PDP as explained above, has within it two phases (study and test) and two conditions (inclusion and exclusion). The study phase involved the presentation of 2 randomized lists of 16 words. In the test phase, participants were presented with word stems of the studied lists and another unstudied list, making a total of 48 words.

Within the procedure, the studied lists are assigned to inclusion and exclusion condition whereas half of the unstudied list is assigned to the inclusion condition and the other half to the exclusion condition. The inclusion condition of the procedure requires participant to fill in the word stems with words they have previously seen or with another that comes to mind. On the other hand, the exclusion condition requires them to complete the stems with words that are completely different from what they have studied.

In the experiment, words that were to be included appeared green; words from the excluded list appeared red; and half of C appeared green while the other half appeared red.

There were 3 experimental conditions: full attention (FA), divided attention at encoding (DA-E) and divided attention at retrieval (DA-R).

Method

Participants

60 undergraduate students of University of Lincoln participated either voluntarily or for 1 course credit. Age ranged from 18 to 40; mean age = 20.7.

Design and Materials

The study used a 2 X 2 X 3 design in which Memory processes (implicit and explicit) was the within-subject factor and Attention (FA vs. DA-E vs. DA-R) was manipulated between- subjects. The experiment was fully counterbalanced by having three possible sets of words and the inclusion and exclusion conditions were based on the study set. 20 participants were assigned to each of the attention condition. To maintain counterbalancing, participants were assigned to study sets one after the other. So participants one did study set 1 and 2 did set 2... This order was also followed when assigning participants to experimental condition.

The experimental programme was written to accommodate 3 lists of 16 words which were between 5 and 8 letters long. These lists were classed as 'inclusion', 'exclusion', and 'baseline'. Baseline words were words that participants were not exposed to but nevertheless asked to complete their stems (see above for inclusion and exclusion definition). Baseline words were included to further support estimates of automatic and conscious recollection derived from inclusion and exclusion scores.

Words were presented visually, in lower case, at the centre of the screen for approximately 4 seconds. The study phase was therefore, approximately 2 minutes. The first three letters of the words were used as stems. The colour of words in the study phase was black. Above each stem in the test phase was the instruction "FILL IN THE STEM WITH A WORD YOU HAVE JUST SEEN" (for green stems) and 'FILL IN THE STEM WITH A WORD YOU HAVEN'T SEEN' (for red stems).All stems have three or more solutions and each stem was unique. So for example, the word SHAPE had the stem SHA and there was no other stem that began with SHA.

The divided attention task was a digit monitoring task. There were two digit monitoring recordings: one of a female's voice and the other was a male's. The digits were generated using an online random number generator. Participants' task was to monitor these recording and detect when a single digit occurred consecutively (e.g. 67891333). Each recording is 5 minutes long with possible 10 detections at encoding for the male voice and 9 for the female voice. For retrieval, if tape was switched at 3.10 minutes, there are 13 detections for male's voice and 14 for female but if switched at 3.20 minutes, there is an additional detection. The number of possible detection depended on the length of the recording played which in turn depended on the condition and participants. Naturally, participants in the DA-E condition used the same amount of time (roughly 2 minutes).

Procedure

Participants were tested individually and they were all required to read the consent form and sign their names on the consent sheet shows an example) before study began. The basic instruction was for participants to remember the words they are about to be shown. There was a brief pause between study and test for further instructions. For participants in divided attention (DA) conditions, instruction included the performance of the divided attention task.

In DA-E condition, participants performed the digit monitoring task during the study phase, i.e., as they memorize the words. They were instructed to devote equal attention to both tasks. Participants in the DA-R condition performed the digit monitoring task when completing the word stems. The importance of devoting equal attention to both tasks was also stressed.

After the study phase, participants were given another set of instruction, guiding them through the test phase. At this stage, they were informed they about to start a test that requires them to complete some word stems. Participants were instructed to complete green stems with words they have previously seen or with another that comes to mind if they could not remember. The red stems were to be completed with a word they have not seen earlier. Participants were also urged to look at the instruction above each stem before completing the stem. This was to remind them of task instructions.

After the experiment, participants were debriefed by explaining in details what the study's aims and given opportunity to ask questions. They were also given a debrief statement to read and/or take away.

Ethical approval: Ethical procedure as stated by the British Psychological Society's Code of Conduct, Ethical Principles and Guidelines (2000) and University of Lincoln's Ethical Principles for conducting research with human and other animals were followed. An ethics form was submitted and the project was granted approval by the project tutor. Participants were not harmed in anyway, either psychologically or physically. A slight chance of fatigue was anticipated, so participants were offered a drink and sweets before and after their participation. Due to the nature of study, participants were slightly deceived but were fully debriefed afterwards as described above. They were also informed of their right to stop the experiment and/or withdraw their data at a time of their wish.

RESULT

The mean proportion of stems completed with target words in inclusion, exclusion and baseline across the three experimental conditions: full attention (FA); divided attention at encoding (DA-E); and divided attention at retrieval (DA-R) as well as mean proportion of time spent in each condition. Mean estimates of explicit and implicit memory calculated from inclusion and exclusion and control scores. Overall average of Inclusion, exclusion and baseline scores across the three experimental conditions implies lack of divided attention effect. DA-R scores were also highest, implying the protected status evidenced by Craik et al. (1996). Explicit and implicit mean estimates are also leaning towards lack of dissociative effect of attention.

A mixed repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA), where Attention Conditions (FA, DA-E and DA-R) was the between-subjects factor and Instruction (inclusion vs. exclusion) was the within subjects factor revealed a significant effect of Instruction (F (1, 60) = 48.339; p&li;0.001). However, the between subjects factor of attention was not significant (F (1, 60) =2.283, p = 0.11) and there was no interaction effect between attention and instruction (F (1, 60) = 1.289; p = 0.284). This means that participants significantly completed more stems with targets words in the Inclusion condition (M = 0.99) than in exclusion (M 0.5) but this performance was not significantly different between attention condition. This finding is inconsistent with a prediction of this study and one of the assumptions of process dissociation, which claimed that the probability of completing words with target words is the same for both exclusion and inclusion.

Baseline mean scores were also submitted to a paired samples t-test. Words completed in the in the inclusion condition (M= 0.1) was not significantly higher than number of words completed in the exclusion condition (t (59) = 0.608; p =0.546). This finding suggested participants did not use any sort of strategy. It also shows that independence assumption of the process dissociation has not been violated, supporting the findings of Jacoby (1998). A one-way ANOVA comparing effect of Attention on overall baseline score (M = 0.09) revealed no significant difference of attention (F (2, 60) = 0.526; p = 0.594).

Implicit and explicit estimates were calculated from inclusion and exclusion scores. The data were analyzed using a mixed design analysis of variance (ANOVA) with study process (implicit vs. explicit) as a within-subject factor and attention (FA vs. DA-E vs. DA-R) as a between-subject factor. The analysis showed the main effect of memory on recall was not significant [F (1, 60) = 1.122; p = 0.294] and the between subject effect of group was also not significant (F (2, 60) = 2.376; p = 0.10). The interaction effect between Group and Memory was also not significant [F (2, 60) = 0.675; p = 0.513].

The findings reported here support the hypothesis that divided attention will have no detrimental effect on implicit memory but contradicts previous findings (e.g. Wolters and Prinsen, 1997) which showed a dissociative effect between implicit and explicit memory by observing reduced performance in explicit memory. It is also inconsistent with findings of Baddeley et al. (1984) and Craik et al. (1996) that reported divided attention effects on explicit memory.

To overcome claims of violation of independence assumption by Curran and Hintzman (1995), participants whose exclusion score is zero were eliminated from analysis as done by Jacoby et al. (1993). The data were again analyzed using a mixed design analysis of variance (ANOVA) with study process (implicit vs. explicit) as a within-subject factor and attention (FA vs. DA-E vs. DA-R) as a between subjects factor. The analysis showed the main effect of memory on recall was significant [F (1, 60) = 4.017; p = 0.05]. However, the between subject effect of group was still not significant (F (2, 60) = 1.70; p = 0.193). The interaction effect between Group and memory was also not significant [F (2, 60) = 0.650; p = 0.526]. This finding shows that overall performance under implicit (M = 0.21) is significantly higher than and performance under explicit memory (M = 0.15), however, this performance did not differ significantly between groups of participants. This is consistent with findings of Curran and Hintzman (1995, experiment 1). Curran and Hintzman (1995) reported a significant priming effect following this adjustments but the effect was not enough to affect presentation duration (which was their variable).

Although highest mean for DA-R (M =579.80), a one way ANOVA reveal no significant difference between time spent in the three conditions (F (2, 60) = 1.965; p = 0.15). An independent samples t-test comparing time spent between DA-E and DA-R also showed no significant difference (t (38) = 1.730; p = 0.092). This is inconsistent with findings of Craik et al. (1996) and the study's prediction that DA-R would show a protected status indicated by higher time spent.

DISCUSSION

Using process dissociation procedure, it was predicted that a performance between explicit and implicit memory would show a dissociative effect caused by divided attention. It was expected that divided attention would leave priming intact while reducing performance under explicit memory. It was also predicted that retrieval processes would show a protected status which would be indicated by longer time spent in divided attention at retrieval in comparison with divided attention at encoding.

The result showed no dissociation effect between implicit and explicit memory which is consistent with findings of Curran and Hintzman (1995) and contradicts findings of Graf and Schacter (1987), Sloman et al. (1988) and Wolters and Prinsen (1997). Also in contrast with previous findings (e.g. Craik et al. (1996) and Naveh-Benjamin et al. (2000 a and b) was lack of support for the claimed protected status for divided attention at retrieval. The result of the adjustments made on the exclusion scores are inline with findings reported by Jacoby et al. (1993). These results of the dissociation are explained in terms of the procedure used and supporting theories.

Although divided attention did not reduced performance in implicit memory, this result needs to be considered in the context of lack of dissociation effect between both memory types. With this said, it is suggested that this finding is due to limitations of the process dissociation procedure as argued by Curran and Hintzman (1995), Wolters and Prinsen (1997) and Stern et al. (2003). These limitations are based on violations of independence assumption by the procedure and the effect of inclusion and exclusion instructions. The claims of possible violations of independence assumption are considered.

Curran and Hintzman (1995) claimed the assumption that R and A are independent can be falsified by examining the equations used by the procedure. Curran and Hintzman (1995) claimed that the basis for calculating R and A become problematic when participants have zero exclusion scores, which leads to over-estimation of R and underestimation of A. They supported their claim by showing strong positive correlation between conscious recollection and automatic processes under several manipulations. However, Jacoby (1998) claimed that correlations cannot be used as direct evidence of violations because Curran and Hintzman failed to explain why they obtained similar findings when they used item-based and participants-based estimates. On the other hand, Wolters and Prinsen (1997) also argued that though PDP controls for conscious contamination, it does not control for the possibility that participants maybe unintentionally retrieving items and recording it as automatic recollection. Wolters and Prinsen explained that this problem may lead to parallel effects of experimental manipulations on explicit and implicit estimates, supporting findings reported here.

Despite this, these differences can be explained by methodological differences. The assumption underlying Jacoby's (1991) automatic process is the nature of instruction given to participants in the exclusion and inclusion condition. Jacoby instructed participants to complete stems with first words that came to mind, whereas Curran and Hintzman prohibited the use proper nouns and plurals. These classes of words are popular and much faster to recollect when needed that other groups of words. This may have contributed to their findings, particularly that of participants using a generate strategy, which will be discussed shortly. In this study, the use of plural was allowed but the use of names and animals was prohibited.

Moreover, violations of independence assumption is less likely to be the case here because when adjustments was made by excluding participants with zero exclusion scores, a significant priming effect was found which suggested that overall performance under explicit memory was significantly lower than that of implicit memory. Lack of significance difference between inclusion and exclusion baseline score also suggested that Jacoby's assumptions of independence and the use of conscious and automatic processes are correct. However, recent investigation comparing PDP to speeded response (Horton et al., 2005) have reported supporting evidence for curran and Hintzman's (1995) claims. Horton et al. (2005) reported that comparison of estimates from speeded response procedure and PDP suggests that A and R are positively correlated and that in the event of high conscious recollection, PDP underestimated automatic retrieval.

Another problem with process dissociation is the nature of instructions given to participants. Curran and Hintzman argued that the way participants are asked to complete inclusion and exclusion conditions bring about the possibility that participants were engaging a strategy different from the one they were instructed to use. When Curran and Hintzman (1995) investigated this, they found 15% of their participants were not following test instructions and they also reported a significant difference between inclusion and exclusion baseline scores. They took these findings as evidence that participants may indeed be using other strategy. They also suggested a possible influence of association between study lists. This problem with instruction is termed generate- recognize strategy "whereby stems that are completed automatically to form an old word are subsequently recognized and withheld, thereby lowering the probability of providing old words in the exclusion condition and, thus, decreasing the estimate of A" ( Stern et al., 2003). Jacoby (1998) also found evidence of generate- recognize strategy but claimed that this does not necessarily lead to violations of independence assumption or findings of 'paradoxical dissociations' which was a term used by Curran and Hintzman (1997) to explain the type of dissociation showed when violations of independence assumption leads to a decrease in estimates of A as a result of experimental manipulation such as attention. Jacoby claimed that paradoxical dissociations reflect floor effects rather than violations of independence assumption and that the use of high base rate words eliminates this paradoxical dissociation. The study did use high base rates which could have affected why the study found no violations of independence assumption.

To this end of generate-recognize strategy, Stern et al. (2003) proposed a guided dissociation procedure that is argued to reduce the complexity of instruction and the use of generate-recognize strategy, thereby subsequently overcoming the problem of violations of independence assumption. The GPDP involve asking participants first, whether they recognize the stem or not. The inclusion and exclusion condition then depends on whether participants recognize the words or not. If they do, in the inclusion condition, they are asked to complete the stem with the word they remember and if they don't, to complete it with the first words that comes to mind. In the exclusion condition, if they had said they rememeber, they are asked to complete it with another word but if they can't, to complete it with the first that comes to mind. At first, this study adopted GPDP's idea of asking participants whether they recognized the words or not before going on to inclusion and exclusion. However, this was abandoned as the first few participants complained about being confused which was exactly what the GPDP was trying to avoid. On the other hand, we kept a line of instruction across each stem, so participants could always read that incase they do get confused. It was also felt that asking this question at the beginning may well be serving as a distractor task on its own, after all as shown by earlier memory studies (e.g. Brown-Peterson, 1959), it does not take long to forget briefly presented information.

Keeping instruction above each stem in the present study may not have been enough to deal with the complexity of instructions given but it did reduced the chance of participants not following instruction, hence, the chance of participants engaging in strategy other than the one asked. This was supported by our finding of no significant difference between inclusion and exclusion baseline scores, which suggested that participants were indeed not using any strategy.

Although limitations of the procedure are able to explain lack of dissociation effect between implicit and explicit memory, this can also be explain in line of theories of dissociation.

A possible explanation for lack of reduced performance under explicit memory when attention was divided can be explained by the processing account (Jacoby, 1983). The processing account asserted that direct and indirect tests rely on different processing; direct relies on conceptual processing whereas indirect relies on perceptual processing. WSC is perceptually cued as shown by findings of Jacoby (1983), Roediger and Blaxton (1987) and Mulligan and Hartman (1996), and so long there is no disruption to physical feature of words, i.e. the stems is physically related to words presented at study, any variable that cause dissociation will not affect performance. The study used a WSC test which has been shown to be a true test of implicit memory (Graf and Mandler 1984; Roediger et al. 1992; 1993). On the other hand, previous findings of divided attention effect on explicit memory used tests of free recall, cued recall and recognition (Craik et al., 1996; Naveh-Benjamin, Craik, et al., 2000; and Fernandes and Moscovitch, 2000); tests that have been shown by Graf and Schacter, 1985; Graf and Schacter, 1986; Schacter and Graf, 1987 as tests that require conscious recollection and thus, according to Fernandes and Moscovitch explanation of shared resources, when attention is divided, will show a significant effect of attention. Therefore, the use of WSC could have confounded the disruptive effects of attention on explicit memory since the words were presented in the same way except a change of colour indicating the instruction. Thus, explicit memory in this experiment was protected by the use of perceptual implicit test.

Nevertheless, participants' comments did not support processing theory. Most participants reported not being able to see the relevance between stems and studied words, even when it appeared green and they know they have probably seen the word. They reported that to them, the stem were just letters rather than beginning of a word. This suggests that participant maybe using some strategy that is unexplained by both standard PDP and the adjustments. On the same grounds, activation theory was rejected because if they could not see the relationship between stems and studied words, it is unlikely that they are tapping into pre-existing knowledge or representations.

Although the study did not set out to test theories of dissociation discussed in the introduction, our result does not support the activation theory. Based on the assumptions of this account, elaborative encoding is needed for successful activation of pre-existing knowledge. Elaborative encoding requires elaborative rehearsal and rehearsal in turn, requires some time, something that was not at participants liberty. Each word was presented for four seconds and there were thirty two words. This account also claimed the use of mnemonics and grouping information as a way to make information memorable. With that time limit and number of words, it is unlikely this were happening. Moreover, all were random words with no association with each other, so it would have been difficult to group. We however have no way of establishing how, if in any way, our result could be accounted for by multiple memory account.

Previous studies of divided attention effect reported that while retrieval process is obligatory, there is a secondary resource cost. This was measured in this study by time spent. As reported above, we found no time difference between encoding and retrieval processes refuting the notion that retrieval processes are protected. This can be explained by findings of Fernandes and Moscovitch (2000) that suggested that the protected status of retrieval processes depends on the type of distraction test used. Fernandes and Moscovitch (2000) reported lack of divided attention effect on retrieval processes when a digit monitoring task was used to divided attention as opposed to when a word monitoring task was used. They claimed a divided attention effect on retrieval process would only be observed if the distraction task and memory task compete for representational systems as do word monitoring task.

Finding no secondary time cost on divided attention at retrieval can also be explained by the procedure used. Process dissociation procedure makes it difficult to separate time spent during explicit and implicit memory and there was no time limit; all participants spent the same time at encoding. So the analysis here is of overall time spent which includes that of implicit memory, which may have confounded the finding.

It can also be argued that the task used to divide attention was not cognitively demanding enough to show a secondary time cost effect at retrieval. This was the argument put forward by Rohrer and Pashler (2003). Rohrer and Pashler argued that studies that reported a 'protected' or 'obligatory' status for retrieval may have used task with low temporal density. They defined low temporal density as the proportion of time during the recall period, devoted to the centrally demanding stages of the concurrent task. Rohrer and Pashler claimed that using a concurrent task with low temporal density reflects an absence of a challenge between both tasks, rather than an ability to withstand such a challenge as it is often reported. Rohrer and Pashler used a cognitively demanding serial-choice task which was presented with a constant interstimulus interval and the pace was determined by the experimenter according to participants' performance. Rohrer and Pashler (2003) reported impairment in recall speed of as well as 25% overall reduction in total memory retrieval, supporting their claims. This was also supported by Naveh-Benjamin et al. (2000b) who reported a 9% total decrease when they followed similar procedure of using a concurrent task with high temporal density.

In conclusion, the result of present study further supports the use of process dissociation procedure for estimating conscious and unconscious recollection as no violations of independence assumption was found. Findings reported here also support Fernandes and Moscovitch's (2000) and Rohrer and Pashler's (2003) about the importance of choosing divided attention task carefully. The procedure confounded calculations of time spent under divided attention at encoding and retrieval, because it is difficult to estimate time spent under explicit alone. The use of WSC, a perceptual implicit test may have contributed to finding no effect of attention. The use of instruction above each word stem eliminates the confusion about instructions. Though unlikely, participants may still be using generate-recognize strategy. For these reasons, the use of GPDP and a word-based divided attention task to explore the effect of attention as a dissociative variable is recommended.

Overall, taking these findings in the context of previous findings that have reported dissociation or lack of and in the context of different methodological procedure, we conclude that the difference between automatic and conscious recollection reflects different retrieval processes rather than different memory types. To establish different memory types, future research should compare neurological disordered patients using the same methods. Most research of these patients have used task dissociation procedure. They could use process dissociation procedure (Jacoby, 1991) or guided process dissociation procedure (Stern et al., 2003) or a Stroop task (Rajaram et al., 2001) study.

The use of a divided attention task with high temporal density is recommended if future research wants to test the difference between encoding and retrieval processes within either explicit or implicit memory.

REFERENCES

• Eysenck, M.W. & Keane, M.T. (2005). Cognitive Psychology: A Students Handbook (5th ed). Psychology Press.
• Graf, P., & Mandler, G. (1984). Activation makes words more accessible, but not necessarily more retrievable. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behaviour, 23, 553 - 568.
• Mulligan, N. W., & Hartman, M. (1996). Divided attention and indirect memory tests. Memory and Cognition, 24,453 - 465.
• Jacoby, L. L. (1983). Remembering the Data: analyzing interactive processes in reading. Journal of Verbal learning and Verbal Behaviour, 22, 485 - 508
• Schacter, D. L., & Graf, P. (1986). Effects of elaborative processing on implicit and explicit memory for new associations. Journal of experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2, 432 - 444
• Schacter, D.L. (1987). Implicit memory: History and current Status. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 13, 501 - 518. Available at http://pages.pomona.edu/~rt004747/lgcs11read/Schacter87.pdf
• Bowers, J.S., Schacter, D.L. (1990). Implicit memory and test awareness. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 16, 404 - 416. Available at http://eis.bris.ac.uk/~psjxb/bowers.schacter.1990.pdf
• Schott et al. 2006
• Sloman, S. A., Hayman, C. A. G., Ohta, N., Law, J., & Tulving, E. (1988). Forgetting in Primed Fragment Completion. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 14, 223-239. Available at http://cog.brown.edu:16080/~slomanlab/papers/FragmentCompletion1988.pdf
• Gabrieli, J. D. E., Fleischman, D.A., Keane, M.M., Reminger, S.L., & Morrell, F. (1995). Double dissociation between memory systems underlying explicit and implicit memory in the human brain. Psychological Science, 6, 76 - 82
• Graf, P., Shimamura, A. P. and Squire, L. R. (1985). Priming across modalities and priming across category levels: extending the domain of preserved function in amnesia. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition (1985), 11, 386 - 396
• Graf, P., Squire, L. R., and Mandler, G. (1984). The information that amnesic patients do not forget. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 10, 164 - 178
• Fleischman, D. A., Vaidya, C. J., Lange, K. L., and Gabrieli, J. D. E. (1997). A dissociation between perceptual explicit and implicit memory processes. Brain and Cognition, 35, 42 - 57
• Grant, I., McDonald, W. I., Trimble, M. R., Smith E., Reed, R. (1984) Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry, 47, 250 - 255
• Scarrabelotti, M. and Carrol, M (1998). Awareness of remembering achieved through automatic and conscious processes in multiple sclerosis. Brain and Cognition 38 183-201.
• Blum, D., Yonelinas, A. P., Luks, T., Newitt, D., Oh, J., Lu, Y., Nelson, S., Goodkin, D., and Pelletier, D. (2002). Dissociating perceptual and conceptual implicit memory in multiple sclerosis patients. Brain and Cognition, 50, 51 - 61