The relation between implicit and explicit learning: Evidence for paralleldevelopment

Much research has focused on the separability of implicit and explicit lear ning, but less has focused on how they might interact. A recent model sugge sts that in the motor-skill domain, explicit knowledge can guide movement, and the implicit system learns in parallel, based on these movements. Funct ional imaging studies no not support that contention, however; they indicat e that learning is exclusively implicit or explicit. In the experiment repo rted here, participants learned a motor sequencing task either implicitly o r explicitly. At transfer; most of the stimuli were random, but the sequenc e occasionally appeared; thus, it was not obvious that explicit knowledge c ould be applied to the task. Nevertheless, participants with explicit train ing showed sequence knowledge equivalent to those with implicit training, i mplying that implicit knowledge had been acquired in parallel with explicit knowledge. This result has implications for the development of automaticit y and of motor-skill learning.