Implicit learning: news from the front

• Published in: Trends in cognitive sciences 1998-10, Vol.2 (10), p.406-416
• Main Authors: Cleeremans, Axel, Destrebecqz, Arnaud, Boyer, Maud
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: computational models; consciousness; implicit learning; language acquisition; neurophsychology; sequence learning
• ISSN: 1364-6613; 1879-307X
• DOI: 10.1016/S1364-6613(98)01232-7

Can we learn without awareness? While the current consensus is most likely to be `no', there is, however, considerable ongoing debate about the role that consciousness plays in cognition and about the nature of consciousness itself. In this article, we review recent advances in the field of implicit learning, based on three perspectives: empirical findings (including neuropsychological evidence), methodological issues, and theoretical positions (including computational models). The overall picture that emerges is complex and reflects a field that is very much in flux: while it seems undeniable that cognition involves some form of unconscious processing, it is as yet unclear how to best separate conscious and unconscious influences on learning, and how to best think about the status of the `cognitive unconscious'. We suggest that implicit learning is best construed as a complex form of priming taking place in continuously learning neural systems, and that the distributional knowledge so acquired can be causally efficacious in the absence of awareness that this knowledge was acquired or that it is currently influencing processing, that is, in the absence of metaknowledge.