Reber's Theory Of Implicit Learning

Implicit learning is defined as abstract, automatic, unintentional, effortless, and unconscious learning. However, how do we know that someone has learned implicitly? Using what method, can we figure out the learning phrase of implicit learning? Many studies have been done on implicit learning starting from 1898. In 1967, Reber released a paper who aimed to investigate the process by which participants responds to the statistical nature of the stimulus arrayed. Through this study, Reber was able to find out that subjects could apply implicit learned information in a transfer-recognition task. Yet, participants were not able to verbalize the reason of choosing the particular strings watch matched the grammar. (Reber, 1967)
Reber then conducted another study to see do people learn the artificial grammar from abstract structure or explicit symbols. (1969) He concluded that participants’ ability of learning the grammar did not have a significant impact by changing the symbols. Yet, errors made by participants increased significantly when the syntactic structure was changed; it showed the changing of syntactic structure had a notable effect on participants’ behaviors. After testing participants formulated abstract structure in order to …show more content…
According to Zajonc and Kunst-Wilson, “exposure experience also allows the individuals to learn a great deal about the stimulus objects, so that the ability to recognize, discriminate, and categorize the object generally improves.” (1980) They conducted an experiment to examine the relationship between the process of developing preferences for the repeatedly presented objects and mere exposure effect. In their results, even conscious recognition is absent, participants could still develop preferences of objects. Yet, their study was not able to provide the information regarding the internal states of