Exploring Explicit Learning Strategies: A Dissociative Framework for Research

To explain learning, comparative researchers invoke an associative construct by which immediate reinforcement strengthens animal's adaptive responses. In contrast, cognitive researchers freely acknowledge humans' explicit-learning capability to test and confirm hypotheses even lacking direct reinforcement. We describe a new dissociative framework that may stretch animals' learning toward the explicit pole of cognition. We discuss the neuroscience of reinforcement-based learning and suggest the possibility of disabling a dominant form of reinforcement-based discrimination learning. In that vacuum, researchers may have an opportunity to observe animals' explicit learning strategies (i.e., hypotheses, rules, task self-construals). We review initial research using this framework showing explicit learning by humans and perhaps by monkeys. Finally, we consider why complementary explicit and reinforcement-based learning systems might promote evolutionary and ecological fitness. Illuminating the evolution of parallel learning systems may also tell part of the story of the emergence of humans' extraordinary capacity for explicit-declarative cognition.