Reber Thomas P, Henke Katharina
Division of Experimental Psychology and Neuropsychology, Department of Psychology, University of Bern Bern, Switzerland.
Front Psychol. 2011 Nov 22;2:343. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00343. eCollection 2011.
Our daily experiences are incidentally and rapidly encoded as episodic memories. Episodic memories consist of numerous associations (e.g., who gave what to whom where and when) that can be expressed flexibly in new situations. Key features of episodic memory are speed of encoding, its associative nature, and its representational flexibility. Another defining feature of human episodic memory has been consciousness of encoding/retrieval. Here, we show that humans can rapidly form associations between subliminal words and minutes later retrieve these associations even if retrieval words were conceptually related to, but different from encoding words. Because encoding words were presented subliminally, associative encoding, and retrieval were unconscious. Unconscious association formation and retrieval were dependent on a preceding understanding of task principles. We conclude that key computations underlying episodic memory - rapid encoding and flexible expression of associations - can operate outside consciousness.
我们的日常经历会偶然且迅速地被编码为情景记忆。情景记忆由众多关联（例如，谁在何时何地把什么给了谁）组成，这些关联能够在新情境中灵活地表达出来。情景记忆的关键特征包括编码速度、其关联性本质以及其表征灵活性。人类情景记忆的另一个决定性特征是编码/检索时的意识。在此，我们表明，人类能够在阈下单词之间迅速形成关联，并且即使检索单词在概念上与编码单词相关但不同，几分钟后仍能检索到这些关联。由于编码单词是阈下呈现的，所以关联编码和检索是无意识的。无意识的关联形成和检索依赖于对任务原则的先前理解。我们得出结论，情景记忆背后的关键计算——关联的快速编码和灵活表达——可以在意识之外进行。
