| Two central topics of debate persist in the field of implicit learning (IL): (1) whether learning and the subsequent knowledge acquired during artificial grammar learning (AGL) tasks are best characterized as conscious or unconscious, (2) whether the acquired knowledge is bound more to physical characteristics of the stimuli or is more abstract in nature. Participants in this study received extensive training with nonsense letter strings (e.g., VJTVXJ). All strings were seemingly random, but some contained a pattern that could be detected. Results indicated that chunks of information made available in the letter strings were accessible to passive and active learning mechanisms, which led to the development of abstract knowledge that can best be characterized as intuition. The experimental design was such as to encourage either conscious or unconscious knowledge. Subjective measures and post-tests were used to distinguish the difference. All corresponded well, providing evidence of their validity and of their heuristic value for establishing evidence of unconscious cognitive processes. |
