Dissociations between implicit and explicit memory in children : the role of strategic processing and the knowledge base

A review of the literature shows that explicit memory develops substantially from three years of age to adulthood, while implicit memory remains stable across this age range. Previously, this developmental dissociation has been attributed to different memory systems, or to confounds with perceptual vs. conceptual processing. Prompted by an alternative developmental framework, the experiments reported here provide evidence against both interpretations. Instead, it will be argued that (a) the implicit - explicit developmental dissociation reflects differences in strategic processing (strategy use and metamemory) across childhood and (b) that implicit memory can show development if a child's knowledge base in the tested domain is developing with age.

Do young children get the message? The effects of repeated video viewing on explicit and implicit information

The aim of this study was to explore the effects of repeat viewing on comprehension of explicitly and implicitly presented information in an animated movie. Seventy-three pre-school children watched an animated film and were tested for comprehension after either their single or fifth viewing. Only children’s comprehension of explicitly presented information was facilitated by repeat viewing. However, post hoc analyses revealed that children’s explicit and implicit comprehension of a central character Thunderbolt significantly increased across viewing conditions, whereas, repeat viewing only facilitated children’s explicit comprehension of the central character Patch. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Familiarity-based word-frequency effects in recognition memory and implicit priming

Provides evidence that familiarity as well as recollection contributes to the recognition advantage for low-frequency words. The importance for explanations of the low-frequency word advantage to account for the influence of both explicit and implicit memory processes is discussed with emphasis given to developing the dual-process model.

Identification of implicit technical relationships in overlapping networks

Overlapping network techniques to expand the single sequential finish-to-start relationship between preceding and succeeding activities in scheduling construction projects have been developed for decades. The hidden logic relationships between activities and two virtual activities, Start and Finish, however limit the applications of these techniques in practice as they may lead to incorrect time parameters of some activities. In this research, a novel approach has been developed to identify those concealed relationships in a structured procedure by a two-dimensional nested diagram. An empirical study was carried out to demonstrate the network modification approach.

Trade-offs and implicit preferences in human mate selection

Two novel to domain research methods - choice modelling and the implicit Association Test (IAT) - were applied to measure trade-offs and implicit preferences in human mate preferences. Collectively, findings from four experiments supported the explanatory superiority of Sexual Strategies Theory as a model of between sex and within sex variability in mate preferences.

Implicit theories and personality patterns in child-victim sex offenders

Research has suggested that child sex offenders hold thematically distinct cognitive distortions, which Ward and Keenan (1999) call Implicit Theories. The aim of this preliminary study was to investigate the relationship between offenders’ Implicit Theories and their personality related cognitions. The variables were measured using the Implicit Theory Questionnaire and Millon’s (1990) MCMI-III personality scales. Subjects were 28 male sex offenders against children serving a custodial sentence in New Zealand, who elected to participate in a treatment program. A majority of participants had personality scale scores that reached the clinical threshold. Results found that dependant, depressive and schizoidal personality patterns significantly correlated with Implicit Theories. Clinical and theoretical implications are discussed.

Sexual murderers' implicit theories

Interviews with 28 sexual murderers were subjected to grounded theory analysis. Five implicit theories (ITs) were identified: dangerous world, male sex drive is uncontrollable, entitlement, women as sexual objects, and women as unknowable. These ITs were found to be identical to those identified in the literature as being present in rapists. The presence of dangerous world and male sex drive is uncontrollable were present, or absent, such that three groups could be identified: (a) dangerous world plus male sex drive is uncontrollable; (b) dangerous world, in the absence of male sex drive is uncontrollable; (c) male sex drive is uncontrollable in the absence of dangerous world. These three groups were found to differ in motivation: (a) were motivated by urges to rape and murder; (b) were motivated by grievance, resentment and/or anger toward women; (c) were motivated to sexually offend but were prepared to kill to avoid detection, or secure compliance.

Identification of five fundamental implicit theories underlying cognitive distortions in child abusers : a preliminary study

Qualitative analysis of interviews with 22 child abusers found strong evidence for Ward and Keenan's (1999) proposal that there are five implicit theories in child abusers that account for the majority of their cognitive distortions/thinking errors. These implicit theories are: Child as a sexual being where children are perceived as being able to and wanting to engage in sexual activity with adults and also are not be harmed by such sexual contact; Nature of harm where the offender perceives that sexual activity does not cause harm (and may in fact be beneficial) to the child; Entitlement where the child abuser perceives that he is superior and more important than others: and hence is able to have sex with whoever, and whenever, he wants; Dangerous world where the offender perceives that that others are abusive and rejecting and he must fight to regain control; and Uncontrollable where the offender perceives the world as uncontrollable and hence he believes that circumstances are outside of his control. There was no evidence for any other type of implicit theory. Results of the study also indicated that there was a significant difference in terms of the endorsement of the Dangerous world implicit theory between participants reporting a history of child sexual abuse and those who did not. Offenders against male victims were significantly more likely to endorse the Child as a sexual being and Dangerous world implicit theories compared to men who had offended against female children.

The identification of implicit theories in domestic violence perpetrators

An understanding of how the beliefs of domestically violent offenders might influence their abusive behavior is central to the development and delivery of any intervention program that aims to reduce the risk of further violence against women and children. This article reports the results of a preliminary investigation into the core beliefs of a sample of domestically violent men. Three major themes emerged from an analysis of the accounts of their violence, which were understood in relation to three implicit theories that participants held about themselves, their relationships, and the world. These are discussed in terms of previous studies of offender cognition, how domestic violence programs might be conceptualized, and their implications for practice.

A manifold approach to face recognition from low quality video across illumination and pose using implicit super-resolution

We consider the problem of matching a face in a low resolution query video sequence against a set of higher quality gallery sequences. This problem is of interest in many applications, such as law enforcement. Our main contribution is an extension of the recently proposed Generic Shape-Illumination Manifold (gSIM) framework. Specifically, (i) we show how super-resolution across pose and scale can be achieved implicitly, by off-line learning of subsampling artefacts; (ii) we use this result to propose an extension to the statistical model of the gSIM by compounding it with a hierarchy of subsampling models at multiple scales; and (iii) we describe an extensive empirical evaluation of the method on over 1300 video sequences – we first measure the degradation in performance of the original gSIM algorithm as query sequence resolution is decreased and then show that the proposed extension produces an error reduction in the mean recognition rate of over 50%.

Does implicit motor imagery ability predict reaching correction efficiency? A test of recent models of human motor control

Neurocomputational models of reaching indicate that efficient purposive correction of movement midflight (e.g., online control) depends on one's ability to generate and monitor an accurate internal (neural) movement representation. In the first study to test this empirically, the authors investigated the relationship between healthy young adults’ implicit motor imagery performance and their capacity to correct their reaching trajectory. As expected, after controlling for general reaching speed, hierarchical regression demonstrated that imagery ability was a significant predictor of hand correction speed; that is, faster and more accurate imagery performance associated with faster corrections to reaching following target displacement at movement onset. They argue that these findings provide preliminary support for the view that a link exists between an individual's ability to represent movement mentally and correct movement online efficiently.