![]() became more accurate across sessions, demonstrating that he had acquired this skill. ![]() Despite not having any recollection of ever performing the task, H.M. While initially challenging, the task becomes easier with practice. Brenda Milner (1962) later showed that he was capable of improving his performance on a mirror-drawing task in which participants trace the outline of a figure with a stylus (e.g., a star) while watching the reflection of their efforts in a mirror. Surgeons removed most of his medial temporal lobe structures bilaterally and left him devoid of declarative memory, and therefore suffering from amnesia. This is why procedural learning is called "nondeclarative." The Case of Patient H.M.īy far the most famous example of a patient who has retained procedural learning in the absence of declarative memory is the case of H.M., a patient with severe intractable epilepsy who underwent surgery as a last attempt at correcting his condition. While declarative memory can, in some cases, enhance or hasten the acquisition of skills and habits, usually conscious awareness of learning is not necessary once the information is acquired, it often becomes difficult to verbalize it. Like skills, habits allow us to function efficiently in the world by responding to stimuli with minimal cognitive effort. An example of a habit is a person regularly opening the refrigerator door when he or she walks into the kitchen. Habits are a form of gradual, incremental learning, a settled pattern of responses toward repeated stimuli. Examples of learned skills are driving a car with a manual transmission (motor), a parent's attentiveness to his or her baby's cry in a distant room (perceptual), and increasing alacrity in solving a Rubik's Cube with practice (cognitive). Skills, the procedures that allow us to function in the world, include motor, perceptual, and cognitive processes. ![]() While most declarative learning is not impaired by rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep deprivation, procedural learning is (Stickgold et al., 2001). It is, however, long-lasting and reliable, as any bike rider knows-even after years of absence from a bicycle, one never loses the skill. ![]() Because it requires extensive practice, it is a slow and inflexible learning system that eventually takes on an automatic or reflexive quality. It is the most primitive form of learning, the first to develop in infancy (Tulving and Schacter, 1990). The difference between declarative memory and procedural memory is the difference between "knowing that" and "knowing how." Procedural learning describes the formation of skills and habits. ![]() One well-studied component of nondeclarative memory is procedural memory. It is a heterogeneous collection of nonconscious memory abilities that depend on various other structures within the brain (Squire et al., 1993 see Figure 1). Nondeclarative memory affects our behavior without our explicit knowledge. It depends on the integrity of the hippocampus and related structures of the medial temporal lobe. Declarative memory is what most people call memory. The major distinction is between declarative memory, which refers to the conscious memory of facts and events, and nondeclarative memory, which refers to nonconscious memory of skills, habits, or other modes of learning that proceed beneath the surface of conscious awareness. In discussing long-term memory, scientists have found it useful to distinguish between several kinds of memory that rely on different brain systems. ![]()
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