Implicit Memory
Implicit memory is memory that shows up in what a person does without any conscious act of recall. A person can fail to recognise a brand and still complete a word fragment with its name.
What it is
The term belongs to the distinction between implicit and explicit memory drawn by Peter Graf and Daniel Schacter in 1985. Explicit memory is what a person can report. Implicit memory is measured indirectly, by how a past exposure changes later performance on an unrelated task.
In advertising research the usual indirect test is the word-fragment completion task. Participants are given partial words and complete them, and the researcher counts how often the completions are brand names they had been exposed to.
In effect
In 2006 Moonhee Yang and colleagues placed brand names in two sports computer games and tested college students afterwards. Recognition, the explicit measure, was low. The word-fragment test showed implicit memory for the brand names.
The pattern is one the mere exposure effect would lead a researcher to look for, familiarity building without the person knowing it. The study measured memory and not liking, so it does not show that effect at work.
What it does not say
It does not say implicit memory changes behaviour. A trace on a fragment test is not a purchase, and the study read for this page does not follow players into a shop.
It does not say the result generalises beyond the sample. The participants were college students and the games were two sports titles.
Sources
- Yang, M., Roskos-Ewoldsen, D. R., Dinu, L., & Arpan, L. M. (2006). "The effectiveness of 'in-game' advertising: comparing college students' explicit and implicit memory for brand names." Journal of Advertising, 35(4), 143-152. doi:10.2753/JOA0091-3367350410.
- Graf, P., & Schacter, D. L. (1985). "Implicit and explicit memory for new associations in normal and amnesic subjects." Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 11(3), 501-518.