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LECTURE 8 – PROCEDURAL MEMORY
OBJECTIVES
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Introduce and describe different aspects of procedural memory:
o Skills/habits
o Implicit memory
o Simple classical conditioning
o Non-associative learning (habituation)
Discuss evidence for the dissociation between declarative and procedural (non-declarative) memory
Identify brain regions differentially involved in supporting declarative and procedural memory performance

KEY DISTINCTION BETWEEN…
Declarative memory – conscious recollection of facts or events
Non-declarative or Procedural memory – non-conscious learning that is expressed through performance
‘Procedural memory’ - Heterogenous group of learning abilities unified by the fact that they are not declarative
(Squire & Zola-Morgan, 1988)
TAXONOMY OF LONG-TERM MEMORY (SQUIRE AND ZOLA-MORGAN, 1996)

EVIDENCE FOR DISTINCTION
The distinction between procedural vs
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SKILLS AND HABITS
“Many acts that we perform regularly become so routine that we carry them out almost without conscious effort
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, 2007)
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e
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E
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patient HM lesions medial temporal lobes (Milner, 1962) - retained this skill over time, even though he denied
ever having performed the task
Pursuit Rotor task:
Participants attempt to maintain contact between a hand-held stylus and a white disk on a revolving turntable
With practice, participants increase the amount of time they are able to maintain contact with the disk
Intact in amnesia (Corkin, 1968) and Alzheimer’s disease (Heindel et al
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g
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, 1985) task, but not always (e
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Xu & Corkin, 2001)
Given an array of disks, have to move one at a time, cant put a big disk on top of small disk etc
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Impaired declarative memory can do this task
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g
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Ps have to press a key below the light as fast as
possible
E
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Nissen & Bullemer (1997) – two different conditions:
1
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Random – sequence of lights determined randomly
Repeating – sequence of lights follows a pattern, e
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DBCACBDCBA

800 trials for each condition

Can participants learn the sequence? Not being told about the sequence but can they learn it?
Is learning implicit?
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Found that Ps in the repeating sequence condition improved with practice (50% reduction in reaction time)
But Ps in the random condition showed little improvement
Was it implicit? Many Ps reported being aware of the sequence – most said they knew about the sequence
But can sequence learning occur without awareness?
Yes
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Two conditions:
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Explicit learning – get specific instructions on how to put the ball plus practice sessions (4 sessions of 100
putts)
Implicit learning – no instructions
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IMPLICIT MEMORY
Previous experience of an event influences subsequent performance without conscious or deliberate recollection of
that event
Repetition priming - Processing of a stimulus is facilitated by recent exposure to that stimulus
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g
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e
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g
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g
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(1982) – Results
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Recognition memory much worse on second test
But no decline in performance on implicit test

Participants were just as likely to complete the fragments with words from the studied list a week later
Mitchell (2006):

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1982 – Ps shown pictures of objects for 1-3 seconds – later given a recognition test for the objects (explicit
test)
1999 – mailed fragments of these seen pictures to the same Ps and asked them to simply name the objects in
the pictures (also sent the fragments to new Ps as a control)
The 1982 group named 24
...
2%)
after 17 years!

evidence of implicit memory

Even found priming for those Ps who had no conscious recollection of having taken part in the experiment
LEVELS OF PROCESSING
Performance on explicit tests is influenced by level of processing at study – implicit test performance isn’t
E
...
Jacoby and Dallas (1981)
o
o
o

Presented Ps with a list of familiar words
Study involved either semantic or non-semantic processing
Two tests:
 Explicit - Yes / No recognition
 Implicit - perceptual identification - words are flashed on the screen very briefly (10ms)
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How many words from the list can Ps identify?

Found:
o
o

Recognition memory better for semantic (vs
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g
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g
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g
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1995)

TWO MAIN THEORETICAL ACCOUNTS
1
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Multiple memory processes

Memory tests involve various component processes
Dissociations between tests reflect the operation of different processes (e
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conceptual vs
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processes look at the reading list!

3
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youtube
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, 1995)
But absent in patients with cerebellar lesions (Daum et al
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, 1995) – cerebellar damage due to
alcohol or medication
Shown in animals with hippocampal lesions but not cerebellar lesions (Schmaltz & Theios, 1972)
Therefore cerebellum involved in storage of memory trace for this type of memory
SIMPLE CLASSICAL CON DITIONING – EMOTIONAL RESPONSES
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Fear conditioning in rats
o Pairing a sound and a mild electric shock
o After several such pairings the rat becomes fearful when hearing the sound alone
Amygdala plays a critical role in fear conditioning to aversive stimuli in rats (Davis et al
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1995) show little or no fear conditioning

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4
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If a second drop falls within a few minutes of the first, there is less contraction, and finally, on the
third or fourth drop, the response disappears altogether” (Thompson & Maddigan, 2007)
One of the most pervasive phenomena – from amoeba to man!
City dwellers become habituated to many noises from the city environment – we constantly habituate to most stimuli
if they have no consequences for us
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Repeated
presentation reduces the neuron’s response to the stimulus
We need habituation – if we responded to every stimulus every time we’d have no time for anything else!

o

SUMMARY
Different types of ‘procedural’ memory: skills, implicit memory, classical conditioning and non-associative learning
Evidence of a distinction between procedural memory and declarative memory – experimental, neuroimaging and
neuropsychological
But memory systems typically operate in parallel to support behaviour, e
...
being knocked down by a large dog as a
child might lead to:
Long-term declarative memory of that event
Long-lasting non-declarative fear of dogs experienced as a phobia rather than a memory



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