Conscious And Unconsious Learning

Question 0

Can we learn without awareness?

Answer 0

Maybe

Question 1

What is conscious?

Answer 1

Phenomenal consciousness = experience of being in a certain state

access consciousness = perceptual/ motor processes in reasoning and rationally guiding thought and speech

Question 2

Describe the case by partaking and Aronson (1992)

Famous case of conscious learning

Answer 2

They showed that there was no evidence of subliminal messages in cinemas

Question 3

Describe the case by Marcel (1983)

Famous case for unconscious learning

Answer 3

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

Question 4

What’s a criticism of the study by Marcel (1883) ( given by hole dear (1986)

Answer 4

marcel altered time between the prime and mask

Criticism: the awareness threshold might change over time

Question 5

Describe what the study by Bornstein, Leone and Galley (1987) did.

(Related to unconscious learning)

Answer 5

They showed that mere exposure to stimuli inscreased liking

This was even without awareness

Question 6

What are the criticisms of Bornstein, Leone and galleys study. (Given by shanks & St. John (1994)

Answer 6

Is it unconscious learning or just short lived fallacy

Question 7

What reply did Bornstein make about the criticism given by shanks

Answer 7

Showed positive correlation between delay and mere exposure effect

Question 8

Describe Kilhstrom et al (1990)

Anaesthesia

Answer 8

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

Question 9

What are the criticisms of the Kihlstrom (1990)

Answer 9

20 studies have failed to replicate

They think the anaesthetic wasn’t properly administered

Question 10

Describe the equations of Pavlovian conditioning

Answer 10

Cs + Us = Ur

Cs = Cr

Question 11

Can we condition humans without consciousness?

Ghoneim et al (1992)

Answer 11

If under anaesthetic= no conditioning of word CS’s paired with a loud noise takes place

Question 12

Can we condition humans without consciousness?

Grings (1973)

Answer 12

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

Question 13

Can we condition humans without consciousness?

Loviband (1992)

Answer 13

Awareness and learning are typically associated in conditioning

Question 14

Is language acquisition an example of implicit learning?

Reber (1967)

Answer 14

Ppts given an artificial grammar paradigm
29 grammar strings but judges on novel string

79% correctly identifies but couldn’t report grammatical rules

Question 15

How does the shanks & st.john (1994) study fit the information criterion?

Answer 15

I don’t know the answer to this need to read the study and understand what the information criterion is

Question 16

What is the sensitivity criterion

Answer 16

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

Question 17

What are the two criteria for the awareness test

Answer 17

1) encourage retrieval of as much conscious knowledge as possible
3) approximately match learning and test contexts

Question 18

What is a criticism of Reber grammar?

In relation to the sensitivity criterion

Answer 18

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

Question 19

What happened in PERRUCHET and PACTAEU (1990)

Answer 19

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

Question 20

What happened in the kinder et al (2003) study?

Answer 20

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

Question 21

Cork et al 1992 tried to replicate Kihlstrom but what was wrong with their study

Answer 21

3 participant had explicit memory of the study items

Question 22

What is the information criterion as stated by shanks & John (1994)

Answer 22

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

Question 23

Why did Reber grammar fail the information criterion

Answer 23

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

Question 24

Implicit skill acquisition: the serial reaction time task: what is it? Nissen & bullemer

Answer 24

Repeated 10 item sequence
Passed information criterion (awareness report v awareness test)
Failed sensitivity criterion (learning v test context

Question 25

What was the serial reaction time task by willingham, Nissan and bullemer

Answer 25

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

Question 26

What were the results from willingham, missed and bullemer 1989

Answer 26

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

Question 27

What is anterograde amnesia

Answer 27

Patients exhibit procedural learning without awareness:
Sequence learning
Artificial grammar