Strategic behavior without awareness? Effects of implicit learning in the Eriksen flanker paradigm.

This experiment investigated whether subjects' selection and use of strategies in detecting a target letter in a flanker task requires intention. Subjects' expectancies for compatible and incompatible trials (trials on which the response to the flanker stimulus was consistent or inconsistent with th...

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Published in:Memory & Cognition Vol. 38; no. 2; pp. 197 - 206
Main Authors: Ghinescu, Rodica, Schachtman, Todd R., Stadler, Michael A., Fabiani, Monica, Gratton, Gabriele
Format: Article
Published: Springer Science & Business Media B.V. March 2010
Subjects:
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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      dt: March 2010
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      pub: Springer Science & Business Media B.V.
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        atl: Strategic behavior without awareness? Effects of implicit learning in the Eriksen flanker paradigm.
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          Ghinescu, Rodica
          Schachtman, Todd R.
          Stadler, Michael A.
          Fabiani, Monica
          Gratton, Gabriele
      su:
        Implicit learning
        Awareness
        Prompts (Psychology)
        Visual learning
      sug:
        subj:
          Implicit learning
          Awareness
          Prompts (Psychology)
          Visual learning
      ab: This experiment investigated whether subjects' selection and use of strategies in detecting a target letter in a flanker task requires intention. Subjects' expectancies for compatible and incompatible trials (trials on which the response to the flanker stimulus was consistent or inconsistent with the target response) were manipulated by presenting cues that signaled the occurrence of these types of trials. Three groups of subjects received explicit, partially explicit, or implicit instructions about the meaning of the cues. By the end of the experiment, all the groups were able to select and use strategies based on the cues to improve their performance. However, this strategy selection developed slowly with practice in the latter two groups, whereas it was present from the outset in the first group. In addition, forced choice tests performed after the experiment showed that the subjects in the implicit condition could not intentionally indicate which stimuli were most likely to follow a given cue. Thus, the data suggest that the selection of strategies occurred outside the subjects' awareness, and without their intention.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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