Unconscious processing effects manifest only if conscious processing is excluded

ABSTRACT

In their discussion paper Steinkrauss and Slotnick argue against a role for the hippocampus in unconscious memory formation and retrieval. Unfortunately, they omitted highly relevant evidence that supports a role for the hippocampus in unconscious memory. They criticize four articles, two from our laboratory, pointing out long-known confounds like residual consciousness. We uncover these reproaches as untrue allegations. In our own interest, we prevented conscious mnemonic processing because reliable unconscious memory effects manifest only if consciousness is completely excluded, and because we always knew that residual consciousness would be our Achilles heel for the proponents of the ‘explicit memory dogma.’

KEYWORDS:

• Hippocampus
• unconscious
• learning
• retrieval
• explicit memory dogma

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation [Advanced Grant TMAG-1_209374 to Katharina Henke].