AFFECTIVE DISCRIMINATION AND THE IMPLICIT LEARNING-PROCESS

A modified version of the mere exposure effect paradigm was utilized i n an implicit artificial grammar learning task in an attempt to develo p a procedure that would be more sensitive in assessing nonconscious l earning processes than the methods currently utilized within the field of implicit learning. Subjects were presented with stimuli generated from a finite-state artificial grammar and then had to either (a) deci de if novel items conformed to the rule structure of the grammar or (b ) rate the degree to which they liked novel items. Because the latter task was the more indirect of the two procedures, subjects' ability to discriminate between well-formed and ill-formed items on this liking task was taken as a more sensitive piece of evidence of implicit learn ing, compared to performance on the rule conformity task. A subsequent test of subjects' explicit knowledge of the rules of the grammar show ed that subjects do have some conscious knowledge of the artificial gr ammar, but subjects initially making liking decisions exhibited signif icantly less conscious rule knowledge than subjects initially making r ule-conformity judgments. The findings are discussed in relation to th e synergistic relationships among implicit perception, implicit memory , and implicit learning processes. (C) 1995 Academic Press, Inc.