implicit memory
memory for a previous event or experience that is produced indirectly, without an explicit request to recall the event and without awareness that memory is involved. For instance, after seeing the word store in one context, a person would complete the word fragment st_r_ as store rather than stare, even without remembering that store had been recently encountered. Implicit memory can exist when conscious or explicit memory fails, as occurs in amnesia and brain disease. This term, proposed in 1985 by Canadian psychologist Peter Graf and U.S. psychologist Daniel L. Schacter (1952– ), is used interchangeably with nondeclarative memory.