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Published January 10, 2014 | public
Journal Article

Nonconscious Learning From Crowded Sequences

Abstract

Can people learn complex information without conscious awareness? Implicit learning—learning without awareness of what has been learned—has been the focus of intense investigation over the last 50 years. However, it remains controversial whether complex knowledge can be learned implicitly. In the research reported here, we addressed this challenge by asking participants to differentiate between sequences of symbols they could not perceive consciously. Using an operant-conditioning task, we showed that participants learned to associate distinct sequences of crowded (nondiscriminable) symbols with their respective monetary outcomes (reward or punishment). Overall, our study demonstrates that sensitivity to sequential regularities can arise through the nonconscious temporal integration of perceptual information.

Additional Information

© 2013 The Author(s). Received November 5, 2012; Accepted July 3, 2013; Online First Version of Record Nov 1, 2013; Published Jan 10, 2014. S. Kouider, A. Atas, and N. Faivre designed the study. A. Atas conducted the experiment and analyzed the data. A. Atas, S. Kouider, and A. Cleeremans wrote the manuscript. N. Faivre and B. Timmermans provided critical input. The authors declared that they had no conflicts of interest with respect to their authorship or the publication of this article. Additional supporting information may be found at http://pss.sagepub.com/content/by/supplemental-data. We thank Isabelle Brunet and Virginie Delmas for technical help. This research was supported by a European Research Council Starting Grant and by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (both to S. Kouider), by the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (to A. Atas), and by Interuniversity Attraction Poles Grant P7/33 from the Belgian Science Policy Office (to A. Cleeremans).

Additional details

Created:
August 22, 2023
Modified:
October 25, 2023