Procedural learning

Procedural memory is a type of implicit memory (unconscious memory) and long-term memory which aids the performance of particular types of tasks without conscious awareness of these previous experiences.

Procedural memory guides the processes we perform and most frequently resides below the level of conscious awareness. When needed, procedural memories are automatically retrieved and utilized for the execution of the integrated procedures involved in both cognitive and motor skills, from tying shoes to flying an airplane to reading. Procedural memories are accessed and used without the need for conscious control or attention.

Procedural memory is created through procedural learning or, repeating a complex activity over and over again until all of the relevant neural systems work together to automatically produce the activity. Implicit procedural learning is essential for the development of any motor skill or cognitive activity.

The difference between procedural and declarative memory systems was first explored and understood with simple semantics. Psychologists and Philosophers began writing about memory over a century ago. "Mechanical memory" was first noted in 1804 by Maine de Biran. William James, within his famous book: The Principles of Psychology (1890), suggested that there was a difference between memory and habit. Cognitive psychology disregarded the influence of learning on memory systems in its early years, and this greatly limited the research conducted in procedural learning up until the 20th century. The turn of the century brought a clearer understanding of the functions and structures involved in procedural memory acquisition, storage and retrieval processes.

McDougall (1923) first made the distinction between explicit and implicit memory. In the 1970s procedural and declarative knowledge was distinguished in literature on artificial intelligence. Studies in the 1970s, divided and moved towards two areas of work, one focusing on animal studies and the other to amnesic patients. The first convincing experimental evidence for a dissociation between declarative memory ("knowing what") and non-declarative or procedural ("knowing how") memory was from Milner (1962), by demonstrating that a severely amnesic patient, Henry Molaison, formerly known as patient H.M., could learn a hand–eye coordination skill (mirror drawing) in the absence of any memory of having practiced the task before. Although this finding indicated that memory was not made up of a single system positioned in one place in the brain, at the time, others agreed that motor skills are likely a special case that represented a less cognitive form of memory. However, by refining and improving experimental measures, there has been extensive research using amnesic patients with varying locations and degrees of structural damage. Increased work with amnesic patients led to the finding that they were able to retain and learn tasks other than motor skills. However, these findings had shortcomings in how they were perceived as amnesic patients sometimes fell short on normal levels of performance and therefore amnesia was viewed as strictly a retrieval deficit. Further studies with amnesic patients found a larger domain of normally functioning memory for skill abilities. For example, using a mirror reading task, amnesic patients showed performance at a normal rate, even though they are unable to remember some of the words that they were reading. In the 1980s much was discovered about the anatomy physiology of the mechanisms involved in procedural memory. The cerebellum, hippocampus, neostriatum, and basal ganglia were identified as being involved in memory acquisition tasks.

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