Implicit learning and tacit knowledge.

I examine the phenomenon of implicit learning, the process by which knowledge about the rule-governed complexities of the stimulus environment is acquired independently of conscious attempts to do so. Our research with the two seemingly disparate experimental paradigms of synthetic grammar learning and probability learning, is reviewed and integrated with other approaches to the general problem of unconscious cognition. The conclusions reached are as follows: (a) Implicit learning produces a tacit knowledge base that is abstract and representative of the structure of the environment; (b) such knowledge is optimally acquired independently of conscious efforts to learn; and (c) it can be used implicitly to solve problems and make accurate decisions about novel stimulus circumstances. Various epistemological issues and related problems such as intuition, neuroclinical disorders of learning and memory, and the relationship of evolutionary processes to cognitive science are also discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Incidental learning and the development of selective attention.

The incidental learning paradigm has provided 2 well-established findings concerning the development of selective attention: (a) The difference between central and incidental task performance increases with age, and (b) the correlation between central and incidental performance decreases with age. It has been assumed that these results reflect a developmental increase in the ability to process information selectively. The present article argues that neither of these findings constitutes unambiguous support for the view that attentional selectivity improves with age. It is suggested that recent theory and research on capacity trade-offs in dual-task performance provide a potentially valuable alternative framework for understanding the development of attentional processes. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Differences in student performance on knowledge, comprehension, and application tasks: Implications for school learning.

88 Ss in Grades 7 and 8 were given 5 repeated trials to master 3 simulated classroom tasks representing the knowledge, comprehension, and application domains of learning from the taxonomy of B. S. Bloom (1956). Findings show large differences in the rates at which the 3 tasks were mastered, the amount of information acquired within each domain, and the retention of the material 5 days later. The knowledge task was learned at a faster rate in more depth, and it was retained more fully than either the comprehension or application tasks. The comprehension task was learned more efficiently and retained longer than the application task. It is suggested that the 3 different tasks were hierarchical in complexity, as originally contended by Bloom. It is further suggested that increased time be spent teaching students the strategies they need for acquiring comprehension and application information. (32 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reversal learning in pigeons: Effects of selective lesions of the Wulst.

Evaluated the effects of bilateral lesions of individual laminae of the Wulst on reversal-learning performance in pigeons. After surgery, Ss were trained to perform a simultaneous color discrimination. Once successful discrimination was achieved, the positive and negative stimuli were reversed, and Ss were again trained to criterion. 20 reversals were carried out. A multiple regression analysis indicated that those components of the Wulst that were critical for increasing the numbers of errors on each reversal were the laminae that receive the thalamofugal visual projections (i.e., the nucleus intercalatus of the hyperstriatum accessorium and the hyperstriatum dorsale). Lesions in the other laminae of the Wulst (the hyperstriatum accessorium and the hyperstriatum intercalatus superior) had no effect on errors. There was no evidence of an increase in either perseverative errors or position habits in the Ss with lesions, suggesting that the reversal deficits were not likely to be due to perseveration, attentional impairment, or inappropriate processing of spatial information. The deficit may have been produced by excessive interference between learning in a given session and learning in previous sessions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Unspoken knowledge: Implicit learning of structured human dance movement.

The sequencing of dance movements may be thought of as a grammar. We investigate implicit learning of regularities that govern sequences of unfamiliar, discrete dance movements. It was hypothesized that observers without prior experience with contemporary dance would be able to learn regularities that underpin structured human movement. Thirty-one adults were assigned to either an exposure or a control group. Exposure consisted of 22 grammatical 3-, 4-, and 5-movement sequences presented twice in random order; sequence duration ranged from 9 to 19 s. In a test phase, exposure and control groups identified previously unseen sequences as grammatical or ungrammatical, and rated confidence of judgment. The exposure group selected significantly more new grammatical sequences in the test phase than the control group. In addition, for the exposure group, the zero correlation criterion, wherein no relation between confidence and accuracy indicates unconscious knowledge, was satisfied. Through exposure, novice observers can learn a grammar that governs the sequencing of dance movements. This has implications for implicit learning of long sequences, working memory, and the development of expectations through exposure to contemporary dance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The acquisition and application of knowledge: A symbiotic relation.

Argues that not only does the application of scientific knowledge benefit from advances made in basic science, but also that advances in basic science benefit from contact with the users of information and their unsolved problems. It is shown in particular that most of the major conceptual changes in cognitive psychology over the past 25 yr. have evolved from issues in the realm of scientific application. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Prior knowledge and correlational structure in unsupervised learning.

Prior knowledge has been shown to facilitate both supervised and unsupervised category learning, but questions remain about how this facilitation occurs. This article describes two experiments that investigate the effects of prior knowledge on unsupervised learning, using the exemplar-memory task of Clapper and Bower (2002). Experiment 1 demonstrates that prior knowledge facilitates learning in this task, as expected, and that this facilitation extends to both knowledge-relevant and knowledge-irrelevant features of the new categories. Experiment 2 shows that knowledge facilitates learning not only by increasing the probability that people will discover separate categories, but also by making the features of different categories seem less interchangeable, thereby reducing interference and confusion among them. Taken together, these experiments demonstrate that prior knowledge has multiple effects on unsupervised learning and suggests that the exemplar-memory task may provide a useful procedure for disentangling and investigating these effects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Impaired priming on the general knowledge task in amnesia.

The status of priming on the general knowledge test was examined in amnesia. Twenty amnesic and 20 control participants studied words (e.g., CHEETAH) under semantic and nonsemantic encoding conditions and attempted to answer general knowledge questions (e.g., "What is the fastest animal on earth"?) under implicit and explicit retrieval instructions. The measure of memory was how many more test questions participants answered correctly using studied than nonstudied words. Amnesic patients showed impaired memory under implicit and explicit retrieval instructions. Control participants showed equal memory under implicit and explicit retrieval instructions, a result indicating that they engaged in explicit retrieval in both instruction conditions. General-knowledge priming appears to involve explicit retrieval that depends on medial-temporal and diencephalic regions damaged in amnesia. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Preservation of specific experiences in the representation of general knowledge.

Investigated the representation of categorical events by observing patterns of generalization in a memory-guided perceptual task. In 8 experiments, undergraduates inferred the representation of pseudoword categories from the relative perceptibility of probes. The type of training items and the distribution of transfer items differed for each experiment. Findings show that when typicality was unconfounded from similarity to previous instances, performance depended on the latter, even when category structure was made explicit and members of a category were massed. Alteration of the encoding task reversed the relative perceptibility of probes. Results are predictable if events are encoded as experienced and retrieved in parallel. It is concluded that dual-memory accounts that assume automatic, stable abstraction are less powerful than episodic accounts that assume encoding variability and specificity of retrieval to the conditions of encoding. (60 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Prototype abstraction and distinctive feature learning: An application to learning Chinese characters.

Chinese characters with related meanings often have a common symbol included among their components. In an exemplar-prototype and distinctive feature classification system, the multiple-component characters (the exemplars) can be said to have a common component (the prototype) distinctive to the shared concept. A study was conducted with 60 undergraduates who were administered recognition tests with new and old exemplars and prototypes. Results show that the traditional language learning technique of paired-associate training with exemplars of Chinese characters and specific English translations led to the poorest performance of the 3 methods tested. Learning either the English concept for Chinese exemplars (exemplar-category training) or the English concept for only the distinctive feature (prototype training) produced greatly superior performance. Instructions regarding the nature of Chinese characters had no effect on performance. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Salience of item knowledge in learning artificial grammars.

Both the specific similarity of test items to study items and the grammaticality of test items were found to be major determinants of performance under task conditions common in the literature. Results bearing on the issue of how item-specific effects are coordinated with knowledge pooled across items are: (1) Better item memory resulted in smaller rather than larger effects of specific similarity on judgments of grammaticality, suggesting that items can be too well differentiated to support transfer to new items. (2) Variation in the effect of specific similarity did not result in compensatory variation in grammaticality, suggesting that any scheme that tightly links the effects of the 2 variables is insufficient. (3) Differential reliance on the 2 knowledge resources was not under good instructional control, which poses a problem for accounts that use functional task analyses to coordinate functionally different memories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Signal detection theory: Considerations for general application.

Notes that while there exist a number of papers describing the theory of signal detection, it appears that many psychologists are not aware of the ease with which signal detection theory can be applied, the range of applications possible, or the limitations of signal detection theory. This paper briefly summarizes the assumptions of signal detection theory and describes the procedures, the limitations, and practical considerations relevant to its application. A worked example of an application of signal detection theory to the study of cognitive processes is included. (46 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Prior knowledge and functionally relevant features in concept learning.

Empirical learning models have typically focused on statistical aspects of features (e.g., cue and category validity). In general, these models do not address the contact between people's prior knowledge that lies outside the category and their experiences of the category. A variety of extensions to these models are examined, which combine prior knowledge with empirical learning. Predictions of these models were compared in 4 experiments. These studies contrasted the cue and category validity of features with people's prior knowledge about the relevance of features to the functions of novel artifacts. The findings suggest that the influences of knowledge and experience are more tightly integrated than some models would predict. Furthermore, relatively straightforward ways of incorporating knowledge into an empirical learning algorithm appear insufficient (e.g., use of knowledge to weight features by general relevance or to individually weight features). Other extensions to these models are suggested that focus on the importance of intermediary features, coherence, and conceptual roles. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Category knowledge in Alzheimer's disease: Normal organization and a general retrieval deficit.

Three hypotheses that could account for deficits in the retrieval of category information in Alzheimer's disease (AD) were evaluated: abnormal organization, class- or category-specific vulnerability, and limitation by general factors, such as decreased processing speed. Relative to 18 elderly control Ss, 18 patients with AD produced fewer items in a category fluency task and had longer reaction times in a category decision task. The pattern of performance across categories on both tasks was normal in the AD group: The same categories elicited the most (or fastest) responses in both the control group and the AD group. AD patients showed normal performance in ranking of category exemplars by typicality. There was no evidence for differential accessibility by category or by class of information (animate vs inanimate). The authors conclude that a general factor or factors limit(s) retrievability equally across all categories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conscious knowledge and changes in performance in sequence learning: Evidence against dissociation.

Two experiments examined the relation between explicit knowledge and motor performance on the serial reaction time (RT) task developed by M. J. Nissen and P. Bullemer (1987). Tests of free recall and recognition of sequence components revealed that reliable explicit knowledge was acquired after an amount of practice that was hardly sufficient to improve mean motor performance. In addition, RT improvement was limited to the ending trials of the 3- and 4-trial sequence components that Ss recalled or recognized. These results were replicated in Exp 3, in which Ss were trained under attentional distraction in the task developed by A. Cohen et al (1990). Overall, these findings undermine the most direct experimental support for the widespread view that conscious knowledge and performance in sequence-learning tasks tap 2 independent knowledge bases in normal Ss. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Acquired equivalence in human discrimination learning: The role of propositional knowledge.

The current study investigated the role of propositional knowledge in human acquired equivalence effects. Across 5 experiments, human adults were trained to associate different visual stimuli. Subsequent procedures presented training that was either consistent or inconsistent with the previous associations. More accurate responding in the consistent versus inconsistent condition reflected an acquired equivalence effect. The results of Experiment 1 indicated that a previously reported divergence between verbal and associative processes was likely due to instructional control. Experiments 2-5 further examined the role of verbal processes and demonstrated that acquired equivalence may be produced with verbal instructions alone and critically through a combination of instructions and actual stimulus pairings. The current data not only challenge a purely associative account but actively support an interaction between verbal and associative processes in producing the acquired equivalence effect in humans. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Information feedback for skill acquisition: Instantaneous knowledge of results degrades learning.

The role of acquired error-detection capabilities in skill learning was investigated by manipulating the delay of knowledge of results (KR). Compared with delayed feedback, instantaneous KR should be detrimental to the learning of error-detection capabilities because it should tend to block spontaneous subjective evaluation of response-produced feedback. Weaker error-detection capabilities should then be evident on delayed no-KR retention tests. During acquisition, one group of subjects received KR after a delay of a few seconds while another group received KR instantaneously; then both were evaluated on several retention tests. Using a timing task with two reversals in direction (Experiment 1) and a coincident-timing task (Experiment 2), we found that, relative to delayed feedback, instantaneous KR degraded learning as measured on delayed retention tests. Although the KR-delay interval has traditionally been considered of minor importance for skill learning, the present findings suggest that very short KR-delays interfere with learning, perhaps by degrading the acquisition of error-detection capabilities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relationship between memory and metamemory performance: A comparison of specific and general strategy knowledge.

Examines (1) age and skill-level differences in metamemory and memory performance; (2) differences in memory and metamemory as a function of type of task and instructional support; (3) whether task-specific metamemory predicts performance better than general metamemory; and (4) whether previous metamemory findings generalize to a variety of memory tasks. 62 average and 66 low-achieving children participated in 3 sessions. General metamemory was assessed for hypothetical performance, with task-specific metamemory assessed for actual performance. Memory performance was assessed across a variety of tasks. Memory improved with age and skill level. Age and skill-level differences were not consistent across metamemory tasks. Strategic metamemory revealed age and skill-level differences, whereas taxonomic metamemory revealed age differences in the average group only. Educational and theoretical relevance of the results are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)