In this thesis, we will explore direct and indirect measures of learning in a visual search task commonly called contextual cueing. In the first part, we present a review of the scientific literature on contextual cueing, in order to give the readers of this thesis a better general idea of existing evidence and open questions within this relatively new research field. The aims of our own experimental studies presented in the succeeding chapters are the following ones: (1) to replicate and extend the findings described in the various papers by Marvin Chun and various colleagues on contextual cueing of visual attention; (2) to explore the nature of memory representations underlying the observed learning effects, especially whether learning is actually implicit and whether memory representations are distinctive, episodic and instance-based or rather distributed, continuous and graded; (3) to extend the study of contextual cueing to more realistic visual stimuli, in order to test its robustness across various situations and validate its adaptive value in ecologically sound conditions;<p>and (4) to investigate whether such knowledge about the association between visual contexts and “meaningful” locations can be (automatically) transferred to other tasks, namely a change detection task.<p><p>In a first series of four experiments, we tried to replicate the documented contextual cueing effect using a wide range of various direct measures of learning (tasks that are supposed to be related to explicit knowledge) and we systematically varied the distinctiveness of context configurations to study its effect on both direct and indirect measures of learning. <p><p>We also ran a series of neural network simulations (briefly described in the general discussion of this thesis), based on a very simple association-learning mechanism, that not only account for the observed contextual cueing effect, but also yield rather specific predictions about future experimental data: contextual cueing effects should also be observed when repetitions of context configurations are not perfect, i.e. the networks were able to react to slightly distorted versions of repeating contexts in a similar way than they did to completely identical contexts. Human participants, we conjectured, should therefore (if the simple connectionist model captures some relevant aspects of the contextual cueing effect) become faster at detecting targets surrounded by context configurations that are only partially identical from trial to trial compared to those trials where the context configurations were randomly generated. These predictions were tested in a second series of experiments using pseudo-repeated context configurations, where some distractor items were either displaced from trial to trial or their orientation changed, while conserving their global layout. <p><p>In a third series of experiments, we used more realistic images of natural landscapes as background contexts to establish the robustness of the contextual cueing effect as well as its ecological relevance claimed by Chun and colleagues. We furthermore added a second task to these experiments to study whether the acquired knowledge about the background-target location associations would (automatically) transfer to another visual search task, namely a change detection task. If participants have learned that certain locations of the repeated images are “important”, since they contain the target item to look for, then changes occurring at those specific locations should lead to less “change blindness” than changes occurring at other irrelevant locations. We used two different types of instructions to introduce this second task after the visual search task, where we either stressed the link between the two tasks, i.e. telling them that remembering the “important” locations for each image could be used to find the changes faster, or we simply told them to perform the second task without any reference to the first one. <p><p>We will close this thesis with a general discussion, combining findings based on our review of the existing research literature and findings based on our own experimental explorations of the contextual cueing effect. By this we will discuss the implications of our empirical studies for the scientific investigation of contextual cueing and implicit learning, in terms of theoretical, empirical and methodological issues. / Doctorat en sciences psychologiques / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

This thesis explores implicit learning in children with developmental dyslexia. While specific cognitive abilities such as phonology and memory have been extensively explored in developmental dyslexia more global, fundamental abilities are rarely studied. A literature review is reported, which indicates that there is a gap in the study of more generic abilities highlighting at the same time, the need of investigating developmental dyslexia in the kind of contemporary context that learning literature provides. Implicit learning seems a suitable paradigm case to explore global abilities in developmental dyslexia since there have been suggestions that learning becomes more implicit in nature after explicit instruction. Based on the proposed relationship between implicit learning and reading, it is argued that impairments in the mechanisms of implicit learning could mediate selective weaknesses in reading performance in developmental dyslexia. The present thesis tests this argument in a series of three studies that are composed of five linked experiments. Together the three studies reported in the present thesis provide evidence for the implicit learning abilities in children with and without developmental dyslexia. The results suggest that while implicit learning abilities are found intact in typically developing children, children with developmental dyslexia on the other hand, might be facing an implicit learning deficit that could affect their reading performance and inhibit them from reaching their full learning potential.

Lidée selon laquelle la mémoire déclarative à long terme celle qui nous permet dencoder et de récupérer sur un mode « déclaratif » des connaissances et des souvenirs acquis par le passé renvoie à deux réalités fondamentalement différentes nest pas neuve. Il y a plus de trente ans, en effet, Tulving (1972)proposait de distinguer la mémoire sémantique de la mémoire épisodique. Cette distinction est toujours admise aujourdhui et constitue une référence pour les pratiques dévaluation en neuropsychologie. Non seulement elle fournit une structure pour lanalyse clinique des troubles de la mémoire, mais elle sert également de cadre théorique pour la compréhension du syndrome amnésique (Verfaellie, 2000). Les relations quentretiennent ces deux systèmes mnésiques ainsi que les réseaux neuronaux qui les sous-tendent restent cependant encore lobjet de débats. De plus, les mécanismes impliqués dans lacquisition de nouvelles connaissances sémantiques sont peu connus. Bien que plusieurs études suggèrent que lapprentissage de nouvelles informations sémantiques dépend de mécanismes implicites (par ex., Ashby & Gott, 1988; Ashby & Maddox, 1990, 1992, Ashby, Alfonson-Reese, Turken, & Waldron, 1998; Hinton, 1981) dautres suggèrent que les mécanismes impliqués pourraient être à la fois implicite et explicites (par ex., Gopnik & Meltzoff, 1997) ou encore uniquement explicites (OConnor, Cree, & McRae, in press). En fait, limplication des mécanismes explicites et implicites pourrait dépendre du type de connaissances sémantiques à apprendre : lacquisition de labels pourrait dépendre de mécanismes plus explicites tandis que lapprentissage de catégories ou des caractéristiques de celles-ci pourrait dépendre de mécanismes plus implicites (Pitel et al., 2009). Dans cette perspective, si les mécanismes dapprentissage implicite interviennent dans lacquisition de connaissances sémantiques, il apparaît intéressant de déterminer leur rôle et les relations quentretiennent lacquisition de connaissances sémantiques et le domaine de lapprentissage implicite. Au plan théorique, cette mise en relation permettrait une meilleure compréhension du rôle joué par les processus dapprentissage implicite dans larchitecture cognitive ; par ailleurs, outre les répercussions que lon pourrait en attendre sur le plan des méthodes pédagogiques, une meilleure compréhension du rôle joué par les mécanismes dapprentissage implicite dans lapprentissage de nouvelles connaissances sémantiques devrait conduire au développement de pratiques de revalidation plus adaptées aux capacités de mémoire préservées ou résiduelles présentées par certains patients amnésiques. Dans ce travail, nous commencerons par développer les principaux modèles de la mémoire qui permettront de situer le système sémantique par rapport aux autres systèmes mnésiques. Nous développerons ensuite les modèles plus spécifiques de la mémoire sémantique qui nous aideront à mieux comprendre comment les connaissances sémantiques sont organisées et comment de nouveaux apprentissages peuvent survenir. Enfin, nous mettrons en évidence les éléments qui permettent de penser que les mécanismes dapprentissage implicite sont directement impliqués dans lacquisition de nouvelles connaissances sémantiques.

<p>Two studies examined whether stereotypes can be created using different learning paradigms and whether the resulting stereotypes will have different properties that affect their activation, suppression, and explicit knowledge. In the Pilot Study, participants were able to learn to use clothing cues to predict membership using both an explicit paradigm that made declarative statements of group membership and an implicit paradigm based on feedback learning. In Study 1, implicit learners performed worse after a depletion task and better following a control task. Explicit learners did not change based on the depletion task. High trait self-control as measured by the Brief Self-Control Scale was shown to predict better performance in depleted implicit learners and worse performance in depleted explicit learners. In Study 2, participants in both the implicit and explicit learning conditions saw decreases in performance when trying to inhibit a previously learned cue. Trait self-control did not predict the ability to suppress the use of a specific cue. In both studies implicit learners made more accurate estimations of the cue probabilities, suggesting a stronger explicit knowledge of the relationship between the cues and group membership. These results provide initial evidence that the method of stereotype learning can have an impact on later stereotype usage although the mechanisms that lead to these differences require additional research.</p> / Dissertation

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 52-56).

Previous studies have indicated that persons with autism spectrum disorder have distinct cerebella, striatum, and an impaired ability to anticipate implicit learning sequences; also, previous research indicates anatomic connections among these regions. Investigating distinctions in connectivity and impairments in the ability to anticipate implicit sequences linked to ASD would help clarify some of the core deficits associated with the disorder. This dissertation sought to explore differences in functional connectivity among the cerebellum, thalamus, and striatum. This dissertation also sought to determine if an impaired ability to anticipate implicit sequences is associated with ASD. Twelve ASD participants and 11 control participants were scanned using an MRI while engaged in a modified serial reaction task. The findings indicate that the cerebellum and the striatum are functionally connected and the thalamus mediates this connection. The results indicate that ASD participants have stronger connections than the control, and ASD participants demonstrated some impairments in learning. However, there was not enough evidence to link ASD to an impaired ability to anticipate implicit sequences. This dissertation recommends that future studies consider the roles that these distinct connections play in symptoms of ASD. / text

Implicit learning is the learning of underlying regularities hidden in the environment without the learner being conscious of what is being learnt. First language acquisition in young children is essentially implicit (Krashen, 1982), but the role of implicit learning in second language acquisition is debatable. Previous research on learning of tonal languages focused on perception and identification of language tones in relatively explicit settings, and showed that tonal language experience may not help with learning a new tonal language in an explicit setting (So & Best, 2010; Wang, 2006). Yet, little research was done on the implicit learning of language tones, and on whether prior tonal language experience plays a role in such implicit learning. In this study, simplified Thai tonal rules were used as a learning target to investigate if implicit learning of such rules is possible. Implicit learning performance among native tonal language speakers with no knowledge of Thai, non?tonal language native speakers who have learnt/have been learning tonal languages other than Thai, and non?tonal language speakers with little knowledge of tonal languages were compared. Results showed that the native tonal language group implicitly learnt the target, and some trends of learning were found in the tonal language learner group, but not in the tonal language na?ve group. This advantage of tonal language experience over the learning of tonal patterns suggested that tonal language experience can be transferable to the learning of a new tonal language in implicit settings. This suggested that, rather than being hindered by their prior linguistic experience, learners with some tonal language background may benefit from implicit settings when learning a new tonal language. / published_or_final_version / English / Master / Master of Philosophy

In the past few decades, cognitive psychologists and linguists have shown increasing research interest in the phenomenon of implicit learning, a term generally defined as learning of regularities in the environment without intention and awareness. Some psychologists regard implicit learning as the primary mechanism for knowledge attainment and language acquisition (Reber, 1993), whereas others deny the possibility of learning even simple contingencies in an implicit manner (Lovibond and Shanks, 2002). In the context of language acquisition, while first language acquisition is essentially implicit, the extent to which implicit learning is relevant to second language acquisition remains unclear. Empirical evidence has been found on the implicit learning of grammar/syntactic rules (e.g., Rebuschat & Williams, 2012) and form-meaning connections (e.g., Leung & Williams, 2011) but little investigation of implicit learning has been conducted in the realm of phonology, particularly supra-segmental phonology. Besides, there is still no consensus on the extent to which implicit learning exhibits population variation. This dissertation reports three experiments which aim to 1) address the possibility of learning second language (L2) word stress patterns implicitly; 2) identify relevant individual differences in the implicit learning of L2 word stress rules; and 3) improve measurement of conscious knowledge by integrating both subjective and objective measures of awareness. Using an incidental learning task and a two-alternative forced-choice post-test, Experiment 1 found evidence of learning one-to-one stress-to-phoneme connections in an implicit fashion, and successfully applied the process dissociation procedure as a sensitive awareness measure. Experiment 2 found implicit learning effect for more complicated word stress rules which involved mappings between stress assignment and syllable types/types of phoneme, and integrated verbal reports, confidence ratings and inclusion-exclusion tasks as awareness measures. Experiment 3 explored potentially individual differences in the learning of L2 word stress rules. No correlation was found between learning of L2 word stress and working memory, processing speed and phonological short-term memory, supporting the belief that involvement of working memory in implicit learning is minimal, and the view that different stimuli/task-specific subsystems govern different implicit learning tasks. It is concluded that L2 word stress rules may be learnt implicitly with minimal individual variations. / published_or_final_version / English / Master / Master of Philosophy

This experiment was conducted to examine the hypothesis that learning by analogy will invoke characteristics of an implicit mode of learning. On Day 1, dart novices learned to throw darts as close as possible to the centre of a target under one of three scenarios: control (without instruction), implicit (while performing a distracting secondary task), and analogy (while imagining an analogous physical image). Each participant threw 6 blocks of 40 darts, receiving repeated instructions before each block. The next day (Day 2), participants were tested for retention and for transfer by the addition of a secondary distracting task. The results showed that significant learning took place in all groups over a period of six learning blocks on the first day. There was also significant response to retention and transfer testing on Day 2. Learning to throw darts without instruction was shown to be superior to learning under both of the other conditions – analogy and secondary task. The study demonstrated that dart throwing instruction using analogy was insufficient to induce the beneficial features of implicit learning. The chosen elastic analogy, in fact, led to a significant deterioration of performance when compared to controls during transfer on Day 2. Sex and skill differences are unlikely to have played a significant role in the main findings. The findings are discussed within the framework of current literature. / Thesis (Master, Education) -- Queen's University, 2007-11-13 09:40:59.568

Thesis (B.A.)--Haverford College, Dept. of Psychology, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references.