Not evidence for separable controlled and automatic influences in artificial grammar learning: Comment on Higham, Vokey, and Pritchard (2000)

P. A. Higham, J. R. Vokey, and J. L. Pritchard (2000) claimed to provide ev idence for separable controlled and automatic processes in artificial gramm ar learning. It is argued that their results are compatible with a single c ontrolled influence: Participants might mistakenly identify more grammatica l items than nongrammatical items as belonging to the other grammar, becaus e the grammars are very similar to each other, and the nongrammatical items are relatively highly dissimilar. Participants' knowledge may be ambiguous , rather than automatic. It is further argued that even if Higham et al.'s data do support automatic effects, opposition logic, in this case, cannot b e said to have succeeded where dissociation logic has failed, because it is used to address the issue of whether participants have conscious control o ver the knowledge they acquire, rather than whether they possess conscious awareness of that knowledge.