Instructor: Prof. Rovee-Collier

Overview:
This course reviews the debate over multiple memory systems (implicit vs. explicit), their defining characteristics, the brain mechanisms thought to underlie them, theory and evidence from animal models, and data on their presumed development in human infancy.  Alternative accounts will also be discussed. The course will be seminar-style with oral presentations of research readings and a take-home final exam.  The considerable reading (text chapters, on-line chapters, weekly articles) is necessary for a full appreciation of the issues and nature of the evidence. 

Prerequisites:
One of the following courses with a grade of B: Cognition, Conditioning & Learning, Memory and Attention, or permission of the instructor.

Text:
Rovee-Collier, C., Hayne, H., and Colombo, M. 2001. The development of implicit and explicit memory. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.  The text will be available for purchase at the 50% author's discount in the Busch Psychology office (Room 207).  Other required articles and chapters will be available on-line.

Synopsis of course:
The course addresses the long-standing and heated debate about whether infants and adults have multiple memory systems. Proponents of multiple memory systems argue that infants possess a evolutionarily primitive memory system like that of brain-damaged, amnesic adults, classic and recent articles and chapters on the memory capacity of human infants and adult amnesics will also be assigned.  The organization of the course (coverage) parallels the chapters in the text.  In order, these include (1) the characteristics of implicit and explicit memory and tasks used with adults to measure them; (2) the brain mechanisms thought to underlie implicit and explicit memory, and the studies with amnesics that prompted the search for different neuroanatomically-based memory systems; (3) the Jacksonian (first in-last out) principle, which gave rise to the assumption that dichotomous memory systems develop hierarchically, and evidence regarding that assumption in animal models (rats, nonhuman primates);  (4) two chapters examining memory tasks used with human infants and evidence of implicit and explicit memory development in infancy; (5) two chapters that consider structural and processing accounts of memory and their applicability to infant memory; and (6) a chapter that considers implications of recent infant data for the development of implicit and explicit memory.

After the first week, weekly research articles will be assigned; everyone is responsible for reading them, but two students/article will be responsible for presenting them to the class and leading the discussion of questions that I will give to the class in advance to think about when the reading the articles.  There will be one exam--a take-home exam that asks students to synthesize evidence from the text, assigned chapters/ readings, and discussion.  Grades will be based on the quality of the presentations (20%) and the final exam (80%).