Affective discrimination and the implicit learning process

A modified version of the mere exposure effect paradigm was utilized in an implicit artificial grammar learning task in an attempt to develop a procedure that would be more sensitive in assesing nonconscious learning processes than the methods currently utilized within the field of implicit learning. Subjects were presented with stimuli generated from a finite-state artificial grammar and then had to either (a) decide if novel items conformed to the rule structure of the grammar or (b) rate the degree to which they liked novel items. Because the latter task was the more indirect of the two procedures, subjects' ability to discriminate between well-formed and ill-formed items on this liking task was taken as a more sensitive piece of evidence of implicit learning, compared to performance on the rule conformity task. A subsequent test of subjects' explicit knowledge of the rules of the grammar showed that subjects do have some conscious knowledge of the artificial grammar, but subjects initially making liking decisions exhibited significantly less conscious rule knowledge than subjects initially making rule-conformity judgments. The findings are discussed in relation to the synergistic relationships among implicit perception, implicit memory, and implicit learning processes.