Involuntary conscious memory and the method of opposition

Abstract

Priming in an indirect test of stem completion should reflect involuntary memory, but can be accompanied by conscious awareness of the past (involuntary conscious memory) or unaccompanied by such awareness (involuntary unconscious memory). We adapted the method of opposition developed by Jacoby, Woloshyn, and Kelley (1989) to obtain a measure of stem-completion priming that should reflect only involuntary unconscious memory. Subjects completed stems with the first word coming to mind, but wrote down a different word if the word that came to mind first had been previously encountered. Facilitatory priming was expected only when involuntary unconscious influences outweighed inhibitory effects of involuntary conscious memory, or of intentional retrieval. We observed a facilitation effect for items processed graphemically at encoding, in conjunction with an inhibition effect for items processed semantically at encoding. In contrast, a standard indirect test showed similar levels of priming following graphemic and semantic encoding, whereas a direct test showed a strong advantage of semantic over graphemic encoding. We argue that the two encoding activities produced approximately equivalent involuntary influences of memory, but that items encoded semantically were associated with involuntary conscious memory to a greater extent than were items encoded graphemically. Comparing indirect and opposition test performance can provide a quantitative index of relative levels of involuntary conscious and involuntary unconscious memory.