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Unintentional learning and implicit performance
Abstract
Understanding the roles that unintentional or unaware processing play in human learning of probabilistic relationships has important implications for the understanding of unconscious information processing and implicit learning. The current research explores some of these differences between intentional and unintentional processing by employing a visual search task which has been used to demonstrate implicit learning. This task involves a relatively subtle probabilistic relationship between nontarget stimuli and target presence. The type of processing in which participants engaged while performing this task was influenced by manipulating the complexity and accuracy of explicit instructions about the relationship between target presence and “nontarget background structure”. Participants in the implicit (uninstructed) conditions showed the expected patterns of sensitivity to the structure without accompanying verbalizeable knowledge to that structure. Participants who were instructed about the nontarget structure also showed sensitivity to the underlying structure. However, instructed participants initially had slower reaction times to target present trials. After practice, those who were accurately instructed appeared to shift their response criteria such that they were more willing to quickly make a target absent judgement. This led to faster reaction times on target absent trials, and more errors on target present trials. Intention to use the provided instructions was correlated with reaction time to target absent trials, while awareness of the structure was correlated with errors to target present trials.
Subject Area
Cognitive therapy
Recommended Citation
Smith, Karen Louise, "Unintentional learning and implicit performance" (1999). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9936773.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9936773