Perceptual enhancement: persistent effects of an experience

Abstract

Presenting a word enhances its later perceptual identification. This article focuses on the relation between this effect on perception and recognition memory. Prior experiments have revealed that perceptual enhancement is independent of recognition memory and have led to the two types of task being identified with separate memory systems. In contrast, the present experiments reveal parallel effects on the two types of task. Perceptual enhancement persists over days but, like recognition memory, is influenced by manipulations of retrieval conditions. I conclude that both perceptual and memory tasks rely on the retrieval of memory for whole prior processing episodes but can differ in terms of the number and nature of retrieval cues that they provide. I describe perception and memory within a common framework.