DOES ORGANIZATION IMPROVE PRIMING

In five experiments, the effects of organization on implicit memory or priming tests were compared with its effects on the explicit memory tests of free and cued recall. Organization was manipulated by varying list structure (blocked vs. random presentation of categorized items) and by instructions. The results showed that organization had parallel effects on the category-production priming test and free- and cued-recall tests; performance was enhanced by organization on both types of tests. It was also demonstrated that the effect of organization on priming was limited to the category-production test and was not obtained with the word-identification priming test. These results suggest that performance on implicit and explicit memory tests is similarly affected by experimental manipulations when both types of tests rely on conceptually driven processing. In addition, performance on two implicit tests is dissociated when one test relies on conceptually driven processing and the other on data-driven processing.