NEGATIVE CORRELATIONS BETWEEN CONTROL PERFORMANCE AND VERBALIZABLE KNOWLEDGE - INDICATORS FOR IMPLICIT LEARNING IN-PROCESS CONTROL TASKS

Negative correlations between task performance in dynamic control task s and verbalizable knowledge, as assessed by a post-task questionnaire , have been interpreted as dissociations that indicate two antagonisti c modes of learning, one being ''explicit'', the other ''implicit''. T his paper views the control tasks as finite-state automata and offers an alternative interpretation of these negative correlations, It is ar gued that ''good controllers'' observe fewer different state transitio ns and, consequently, can answer fewer post-task questions about syste m transitions than can ''bad controllers''. Two experiments demonstrat e the validity of the argument by showing the predicted negative relat ionship between control performance and the number of explored state t ransitions, and the predicted positive relationship between the number of explored state transitions and questionnaire scores. However, the experiments also elucidate important boundary conditions for the criti cal effects. We discuss the implications of these findings, and of oth er problems arising from the process control paradigm, for conclusions about implicit versus explicit learning processes.