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Lieberman, Ochsner, Gilbert, & Schacter (2001) question the role of explicit memory and attentional resources in behaviour-induced attitude change. To test the hypothesis that behaviour-induced attitude change does not require explicit memory or working memory (i.e., any consciously controlled processing) these authors compare the performance of a sample of elderly patients to a sample of amnesics on a task designed to tap into behavioural-induced attitude change. Based on their findings that the amnesic patients showed just as much behaviour-induced attitude change as did the matched control participants despite the fact that they had no explicit memory for the source (counter-attitudinal behaviour) of their attitude change, Lieberman et al. argue that explicit memory is not important to behaviour-induced attitude change. I believe that there are a number of problems with this study however, and in this paper I would like to address one of these in particular. The main problem, and this is one that we have touched on in class, deals with the use of amnesiac patients in this experiment as “controls.” Clearly, there are more differences between the amnesics and the other sample (elderly in this case) than simply the lack of explicit memory. In addition, generalizing the effects found with amnesics to “normal” populations seems problematic, for a number of reasons. The specific argument that I would like to make against the findings presented in this study deals with findings that suggest that although autobiographical recall is impaired in amnesics, semantic memory related to recent autobiographical memories, such as the ability to accurately report one’s traits based on recent behaviour, has often been found to remain intact. For example, patients who are unable to report events that have happened to them since the onset of their condition are nevertheless able to report accurately on their current traits and dispositions. This suggests that although there is no conscious recollection of recent events, there is an ability to glean information about these events. The fact that semantic memory can be updated with respect to trait information despite the absence of memory for relevant events indicates that perhaps the amnesics in this study updated trait information between the counter-attitudinal behaviour and the final ranking task. The updated trait information could be something like, “I prefer impressionism to modernism, except when it’s a Kandinsky,” and could be held in conscious awareness, although the event that led to the update is not. To see if this is the case, the present study could test for the participant’s trait descriptors, or justifications, after making the critical rankings.