Conscious And Unconsious Learning Flashcards
Can we learn without awareness?
Maybe
What is conscious?
Phenomenal consciousness = experience of being in a certain state
access consciousness = perceptual/ motor processes in reasoning and rationally guiding thought and speech
Describe the case by partaking and Aronson (1992)
Famous case of conscious learning
They showed that there was no evidence of subliminal messages in cinemas
Describe the case by Marcel (1983)
Famous case for unconscious learning
Ppts were briefly shown prime and then given a word v non word task
Showed: reaction times were faster when the target word and the prime were semantically related
What’s a criticism of the study by Marcel (1883) ( given by hole dear (1986)
marcel altered time between the prime and mask
Criticism: the awareness threshold might change over time
Describe what the study by Bornstein, Leone and Galley (1987) did.
(Related to unconscious learning)
They showed that mere exposure to stimuli inscreased liking
This was even without awareness
What are the criticisms of Bornstein, Leone and galleys study. (Given by shanks & St. John (1994)
Is it unconscious learning or just short lived fallacy
What reply did Bornstein make about the criticism given by shanks
Showed positive correlation between delay and mere exposure effect
Describe Kilhstrom et al (1990)
Anaesthesia
Put ppts under anaesthesia and gave them a memory test (strongly associated cue - target pairs with 60+ trials)
They were tested on the pairs either 90 mins after or 14 days
Recall and recognition at change but:
They had memory for pairs on implicit generation test
What are the criticisms of the Kihlstrom (1990)
20 studies have failed to replicate
They think the anaesthetic wasn’t properly administered
Describe the equations of Pavlovian conditioning
Cs + Us = Ur
Cs = Cr
Can we condition humans without consciousness?
Ghoneim et al (1992)
If under anaesthetic= no conditioning of word CS’s paired with a loud noise takes place
Can we condition humans without consciousness?
Grings (1973)
Ppts given 2 CS’s (Cs+ and Cs-)
Cs+ grace larger GSR after training
Reverse conditions and told ppts
Now Cs- gives a larger GSR than Cs+ did in the first trial and control trials > meaning that there must be some knowledge but no direct assessment of awareness
Can we condition humans without consciousness?
Loviband (1992)
Awareness and learning are typically associated in conditioning
Is language acquisition an example of implicit learning?
Reber (1967)
Ppts given an artificial grammar paradigm
29 grammar strings but judges on novel string
79% correctly identifies but couldn’t report grammatical rules
How does the shanks & st.john (1994) study fit the information criterion?
I don’t know the answer to this need to read the study and understand what the information criterion is
What is the sensitivity criterion
To show that 2 DVs related to dissociable underlying systems we must be able to show that our test of awareness is sensitive to all of the relevant conscious knowledge
What are the two criteria for the awareness test
1) encourage retrieval of as much conscious knowledge as possible
3) approximately match learning and test contexts
What is a criticism of Reber grammar?
In relation to the sensitivity criterion
They used implicit measures (forced choices)
Therefore they aren’t getting as much conscious knowledge as possible (failing the information criterion)
The likely cause of the results has been put down to memorisation
What happened in PERRUCHET and PACTAEU (1990)
Ppts learnt letter string
They had a high accuracy at identifying bigrams
But it fails the information criteria as it can be explained by familiarity
What happened in the kinder et al (2003) study?
When given standard instructions they were faster making grammatical judgements- the results were explained by familiarity (speed) not grammaticality
Failed information criteria and showed that ppts don’t need explicit knowledge of grammar to make grammaticality judgements
Cork et al 1992 tried to replicate Kihlstrom but what was wrong with their study
3 participant had explicit memory of the study items
What is the information criterion as stated by shanks & John (1994)
Before concluding that subjects are unaware of the information that they have learned and that is influencing their behaviour, it must be possible to establish that the information the experimenter is looking for in the awareness test is indeed the information responsible for performance changes
Simply put: the information the experimenter is looking for in the awareness test awareness test must be the information responsible for the performance changes
Why did Reber grammar fail the information criterion
Participants are not necessarily learning rules but may be
A) deciding on the basis of familiar bi/trigrams
B) generalising from memorised strings
And if the ppts aren’t learning rules then awareness tests which ask for rules are not appropriate
Implicit skill acquisition: the serial reaction time task: what is it? Nissen & bullemer
Repeated 10 item sequence
Passed information criterion (awareness report v awareness test)
Failed sensitivity criterion (learning v test context
What was the serial reaction time task by willingham, Nissan and bullemer
Phase 1: serial rt task
Phase 2: structured interview ‘did you notice anything about the task?’
‘Did you ever notice any pattern or repeating sequence’
Phase 3: prediction test
What were the results from willingham, missed and bullemer 1989
Prediction task dissociated from STR task:
STR task: unaware better than control
Prediction task: unaware not better than control
Satisfied info criteria
broadly satisfied sensitivity criteria
What is anterograde amnesia
Patients exhibit procedural learning without awareness:
Sequence learning
Artificial grammar
