Abstract

The theories of memory have contrasted the structural view and the processing view, however there have been suggestions that two views might be integrated. The present paper reviews the research on explicit memory and implicit memory, and explains the theoretical differences between the structural view and the processing view on the explicit and implicit memories. The structural view (or the system view) assumed that explicit memory and implicit memory could reflect separate memory systems in different brain regions based on neuropsychological data. On the other hand, the processing view argued that different processing operations could result in different memory expressions, such as explicit and implicit memories. The processing view has the benefit in term of the theoretical parsimony. Recently, there have been attempts to integrate these two views on explicit memory and implicit memory. Moreover, the theoretical differences between the two views have contributed to expand memory models.