Implicit learning Flashcards
What are examples of implicit learning?
> Knowledge of implicit rules
Amnesiacs learning new skills
Automatic processing
What is implicit memory?
Memory without any sensation of remembering
What did Reber and Reber (2001) hypothesise?
Implicit learning is unconscious, therefore there must be learning processes that operate independently of consciousness
What are the examples of implicit learning?
> Priming / subliminal perception
Perceptual motor learning / rule learning
Clinical dissociations
What are the two stages of information processing?
> Encoding
> Retrieval
At what stage of information processing does amnesia manifest?
Retrieval
What did Cheesman and Merikle (1984) establish?
> Subjective threshold (threshold of aware discrimination)
> Objective threshold (threshold of discrimination)
What does subliminal priming require?
A stimulus presented below the subjective threshold and above the objective one.
What is subliminal priming?
Priming with unconsciously detected information
What do demonstrations of unconscious priming focus on?
> Accessibility of information at encoding
> Availability of information after storage
What are the two theories of unconscious detection?
> That information is inaccessible during encoding
> That information is not accessible to the conscious mind at encoding
What did Vicary (1957) demonstrate?
The effectiveness of subliminal advertising in cinema concession stand sales
Who demonstrated that effectiveness of subliminal advertising in cinema concession stand sales?
Vicary (1957)
What is the requirement for subliminal priming?
The stimuli is too short or too low intensity to be detected consciously
What did Bargh, Chen and Burrows (1996) demonstrate?
That priming someone with old age means they take long to walk to the elevator
Who demonstrated that priming has a behavioural impact?
Bargh, Chen and Burrows (1996)
What did Jacoby et al (1989) demonstrate?
Subliminal priming with non-famous names makes people judge them as famous later
Who demonstrated that subliminal priming can increase familiarity?
Jacoby et al (1989)
What did Mulligan (1997) find?
While distracted word memorisation was poor, but improved when using a recognition task instead of a recall one
What did Reber (1967) demonstrate?
> Trained people to recognise complex letter strings with an undisclosed grammar rule
Tested later to see if they had learned the rule
Performed well in test
Could not explicitly identify a rule
What did Dienes and Altmann (1997) find?
> Expanded the Reber (1967) study
> People can extended their rule awareness to new letter strings
What did Altmann, Dienes and Goode (1995) find?
> Extended Reber (1967)
> Cross-modal transfer (letters to musical tones)
What did Reber, Kassin, Lewis and Cantor (1980) find?
> Extended Reber (1967)
> If explicitly told there is a rule test performance drops
What did Dulaney, Carlson and Dewey (1984) find?
> Extended Reber
> Found that training on letter pairs was just as effective for end performance
What does Dulaney, Carlson and Dewey (1984) suggest?
Memorisation by rote of acceptable letter pairs rather than implicit learning
What did Kinder and Assmann (2000) find?
> Extended Reber (1967)
Found grammaticality conflated with familiarity
When looking at completely unfamiliar letter strings test results were poor
What did Kinder, Shanks, Cock and Tunney (2003) find?
> Extended Reber (1967)
Familiarity increases fluency (fluency effect)
When told to ignore fluency, performance drops
What id the fluency effect?
The easier something is to process, the more familiar it seems
What did Nissen and Bullemer (1987) find?
> Serial reaction time task
> Ppts demonstrated dissociation between performance and perceived performance
What is the serial reaction time task?
> Present people with a stimuli that follows a rule
> Training period
> Test:
-> Transfer task
-> Indirect measures
-> Direct measuresWhat did Kelly and Burton (2001) find?
> Serial reaction time task
Learning through observation impairs performance
Learning through observation does not effect rule awareness
What did Cleeremans and Jimenez (1998) find?
> Serial reaction time task
> When people are told not to generate a sequence they will still generate one
What did Cohen et al (1990) find?
> Serial reaction time task
> No interference from secondary tasks
What did Rowland and Shanks (2004) find?
> Serial reaction time task
> Highly visually demanding tasks can interfere with rules learning
What did Johnstone and Shanks (1999) find?
> Serial reaction time task
Motivation (payments) increased performance in unlearned tasks
When old info was presented in full then this difference disappeared
What does the implicit learning = rule abstraction theory state?
> Learning tracks patterns and forms them into unconscious rules
What becomes learned is deeper underlying rules
Cross modal transfer is possible
Do not need to consciously attend to information
What does implicit learning = exemplar based theory state?
> Learn by example
Store examples in memory
When there are enough, we can make predictions through comparison
Therefore information does not need to be consciously attended to
What does the theory that there is no explicit learning state?
> Transfer appropriate processing
Cognitive system designed to find shortcuts
Shortcutting forms simple rules
Attention is required for learning
What did Morris et al (1977) find?
> Transfer appropriate processing
> When training and testing matched (either phonetic or semantic properties of words) performance improved
What neurological evidence is there for implicit learning?
> Double dissociations (implicit and explicit learning)
> Neuroimaging studies
What types of clinical studies have explored implicit learning?
> Anaesthesia > Amnesia > Parkinson's disease > Prosopagnosia > Blindsight > Split brain
What did Kihlstrom et al (1990) find?
> Word presentation during surgery
> Later recall showed improved performance on indirect tests
What is the criticism of Kihlstrom et al (1990)?
Failure to replicate:
> Cork, Kihlstrom and Schacter (1992)
> Jalicic et al (1993)
What did Hughes et al (1994) find?
> Played a stop-smoking tape in surgery
Found reduced smoking behaviour 1 month post-op
No effect for control
What did Knowlton, Ramus and Squire (1992) find?
> Implicit grammar learning in amnesiacs
> Explicit learning v poor
What did Knopman (1991) find?
> Amnesiac / Korsakoff patients
Serial reaction time task
Implicit rule learning intact, explicit learning non-existant
What is Parkinson’s disease?
> Degenerative disorder
Impaired speech and motor performance
Memory loss
Deficit in the basal ganglia
What did Ferrare, Balota and Connor (1993) find?
> Parkinson’s Disease
Serial reaction time task
Deficits in implicit learning
What did Smith et al (2001) find?
> Parkinson’s Disease
Serial reaction time task
Implicit learning was present
Criticism of Ferrare, Balota and Connor (1993)
What are the criticisms of Ferrare, Balota and Connor (1993)?
> Smith et al (2001)
> Problematic demonstration of implicit learning
What did DeHann, Young and Newcombe (1991) find?
> Case study
Prosopagnosia
Unable to explicitly select familiar faces
Implicit recall present
What did DeHann and Campbell find?
> Replicated DeHann, Young and Newcombe (1991)
Case study
Prosopagnosia
Could not find evidence of explicit or implicit recall
What is the double dissociation around implicit and explicit memory?
> Parkinson’s Disease - impaired implicit
> Amnesia - impaired explicit
What are the problems with the implicit/explicit double dissociation?
> Parkinson’s Disease - impaired implicit learning
Amnesia - impaired explicit
This dichotomy DISAPPEARS if there is extensive training
What is blindsight?
Responding to visual stimuli in the absence of conscious vision
What visual abilities do patients with damage to the primary visual cortex occasionally retain?
> Better than chance performance on forced choice discrimination tasks
Spatial navigation and coordination
What is split brain syndrome?
Some cases of severe epilepsy is treated by severing the corpus callosum
What are the methodological issues associated with implicit learning studies?
> Many of the studies have a numerical advantage for the controls > Low statistical power > Explicit measures are not exhaustive > Biased > Relying on null effects
What are the theoretical issues with the dualist argument?
> Assume dissociable mechanisms, but claim they can interact
Assume explicit and implicit learning are different but both dependant on implicit learning
Neural localisation not evidence for different reasoning systems
What are the theoretical issues with the single system argument?
> Continuum difficult to empirically test
Denying the presence of unconscious processes does not accommodate the majority of research
Impossible to demonstrate unconscious learning
