Spared Priming Despite Impaired Comprehension: Implicit Memory in a Case of Word-Meaning Deafness

Previous research has established that direct priming effects on implicit memory tests can be dissociated from explicit remembering. Evidence from studies of college students suggests that priming on various implicit tests can be characterized as a presemantic phenomenon: Priming can occur at full strength following nonsemantic encoding tasks that typically produce low levels of explicit memory. To provide a strong test of this idea, we examined auditory priming in a case of word-meaning deafness. Despite the patient's impaired auditory comprehension abilities, he showed normal priming on auditory identification tests after study-list exposure to spoken words. Results support the idea that priming depends on perceptual systems that operate at a presemantic level.