Elementary school children's explicit and implicit memory for faces of preschool classmates

This study examined elementary school children's memories for faces of preschool classmates after a 3-year interval. Children recognized their former classmates at an above-chance level, but their level of recognition was significantly lower than the level shown by the preschool teachers. Children showed implicit memory of classmates by making fewer errors while performing a face-matching task in classmate conditions than in control conditions. However, the classmate advantage on the face-matching task was found to decrease across the 3-year interval. Several findings in this study pointed to functional independence of implicit and explicit memory (e.g., children's explicit recognition memory, but not implicit memory, was related to amount of time children spent together at preschool).