This work is based on qualitative interviews with four educationists who before their university studies lack education in their own field of work. The study aims to explore how higher learning influenced and affected these people. As a theoretical point of view the concept of implicit learning and Aristotle’s epistemological approach was used. The study gives an idea that the concept of knowledge is advanced and can go from practical experience to more theoretical understandings. The result of the study shows, despite some criticism on the standard of the education, that the subjects proved to have developed understanding in reflection, communication and personal awareness. In addition this kind of comprehension can be hidden from us and therefore difficult to understand and explain.

Recent studies show that when words are correlated with the colours they are printed in (e.g., MOVE is presented 75% of the time in blue), colour identification is faster when the word is presented in its expected colour (MOVE in blue) than in an unexpected colour (MOVE in green). The present series of experiments explored the possible mechanisms involved in this colour-word contingency learning effect. Experiment 1 demonstrated that the effect was already present after 18 learning trials. During subsequent unlearning, the effect extinguished equally rapidly, suggesting that only a handful of the most recently encountered trials are used to predict responses. Two reanalyses of data from Schmidt, Crump, Cheesman, and Besner (2007) ruled out an account of the effect in terms of stimulus repetitions. Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated that participants who carry a memory load do not show a contingency effect, supporting the hypothesis that limited-capacity resources are used to retrieve a small number of trial memories in order to prepare a response. Experiment 4 demonstrated that memory resources are required for both storage and retrieval processes.

Under typical between stimulus dual-task conditions, implicit sequence learning typically suffers, except under within stimulus conditions, where the stimuli for both tasks are the same. This finding is inconclusive, given that it has not been replicated and the study under which it was obtained was methodologically flawed. The finding also seemed to contradict the psychological refractory period finding that simultaneous presentation of the two task stimuli will result in performance decrements. Two experiments were conducted to test the effect of within stimulus presentation in a dual-task implicit learning task. In Experiment 1, within stimulus presentation resulted in improved sequence learning, relative to between stimulus presentation. The second experiment did not show an effect of response selection load under within stimulus presentation conditions. The findings suggest that implicit learning can occur under attentionally demanding conditions, but that the incidental task structure to be learned should be comprised of stimuli that are already attended during primary task processing.

Thesis (M. Sc.) -- University of Alberta, 2010. / "A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science, Psychology, University of Alberta." Title from pdf file main screen (viewed on January 5, 2010). Includes bibliographical references.

During the production of language, speakers tend to use the same structural patterns from one utterance to the next if it is possible to do so. For example, if a speaker uses a passive or dative construction, he/she is relatively more likely to use the same construction again in the next utterance (e.g., Bock, 1986; Bock & Loebell, 1990; Hartsuiker & Kolk, 1998): the sentence structure "persists".The current study investigates syntactic persistence in first and second language speakers of English and Korean using within-language primes (Experiments 1A, 1B, and 2) and across-language primes (Experiment 3). The target structures were transitive alternate structures (active and passive) and dative alternate structures (double object dative/DAT-ACC dative and prepositional dative/ACC-DAT dative). The experimental paradigm involved repetition of an auditory stimulus, followed by picture description. Overall, syntactic priming effects were found, although various magnitudes were observed as a function of structure; strong effects were found for "shared" syntactic constructions across languages (e.g., active vs. passive) and weak priming effects were found for syntactic constructions not shared (e.g., double object dative vs. prepositional dative) between English and Korean. Other asymmetrical priming effects were observed, reflecting differences between Korean and English such that reliable priming effects were found from L1 to L2, but not from L2 to L1 for Korean-as-L2 speakers (English-as-L1) These patterns of asymmetrical priming imply that cross-linguistic differences might interfere with syntactic persistence in production process unless speakers are highly advanced proficient bilinguals. Also, the present study showed that syntactic priming appears to be sensitive to the order of case-marked phrases in the cross-language priming condition. This finding indicates that the order of case-marked arguments is involved in syntactic repetition. It shed lights on further universal accounts of syntactic priming.

This study evaluated the effects of input enhancement techniques and metalinguistic/collaborative awareness on the acquisition of the plural -s morpheme. Additionally, the durability of these interventions on the target linguistic feature was examined. The two treatment groups and the comparison group consisted of 101 grade 5 students enrolled in a French-language school board in the Montreal area. A pretest-posttest design was used to assess participants before and after the treatments. A series of 8 oral and written treatment activities focusing on plural -s were specifically created for the study, which lasted 4 weeks. The findings demonstrate that both groups showed durable, definite intervention effects for written production. The metalinguistic/collaborative group significantly outperformed the input enhancement group in oral production, indicating that input enhancement in conjunction with metalinguistic awareness is effective. Nonetheless, the learning effect for oral production was found to be robust for both groups, 5 months after the end of the treatment period, as well as for a small subsample selected from each group 10 months later.

<p>Cognitive psychologists have long been interested in the nature of the representations that underlie human behaviours. In the domain of human memory, two main accounts have been forwarded to explain how memory is represented. The multiple memory systems account posits that different phenomenological experiences of memory are the result of separate and distinct representations. In contrast, the processing account posits that there is one memory system, and that different phenomenological experiences of memory are the result of the processes engaged in when probing memory. The explanatory power of these two accounts has been evaluated in a number of domains, where it has been shown that a processing view can accommodate many of the key findings that previously led researchers to propose a separate systems framework. The goal of this thesis was to extend this work by assessing the nature of the representations that underlie implicit sequence learning. The empirical portions of this thesis provide preliminary evidence suggesting that contextual features are incorporated into implicit sequence learning. Overall, the results reported in the empirical chapters of this thesis are consistent with a processing account, as they indicate that the episodic representations that are involved in explicit remembering also support performance in implicit memory tasks.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Social media as a tool in the classroom is not a concept one hears much about. Being that social media is still a relatively new phenomenon, this is not particularly strange. Research surrounding the subject is sparse, but there are several articles that show there being a possible place for social media in the classroom. These studies find that there is a need for educators to be properly informed and make precise decisions regarding how and why they want to use social media in the classroom. In this paper we found evidence that supports the idea that social media can be useful as a tool in the classroom; however, findings show that there are few if any moments of explicit vocabulary learning, and therefore social media should be used more as a motivational tool, resulting in implicit vocabulary acquisition. In order to get proper usage of social media, educators need to conduct their own research, thereby expanding the knowledge of social media as a tool.

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