On the development of conscious and unconscious memory

Abstract

The distinction between conscious and unconscious memory, which is central to modern theories of cognition, has received only limited scrutiny in developmental research. One reason is a need for developmental methodologies that allow age variability in conscious and unconscious memory to be quantified. A simple paradigm (called conjoint recognition) and model are presented that quantify conscious and unconscious memory for learned materials and for the types of unlearned materials that have been found to induce false memories in children. A validation study showed that the model gave excellent accounts of the performance of 7- and 10-year-olds and that conscious and unconscious memory parameters reacted in appropriate ways to 3 manipulations (age, meaningfulness of distractors and targets, and priming).