Outcome Evaluation and Procedural Knowledge in Implicit Learning

Although implicit learning has been considered in recent years as a declarative memory phenomenon, we show that a procedural model can better elucidate some intriguing and unexpected data deriving from experiments carried out with Sugar Factory (Berry & Broadbent, 1984), one of the most popular paradigms in this area, and can account for other phenomena reported in the literature that are at odds with current explanations. The core of the model resides in its adaptive mechanism of action selection that is related to outcome evaluation. We derived two critical predictions from the model concerning: (a) the role of situational factors, and (b) the effect of a change in the criterion adopted by participants to evaluate the outcome of their actions. We tested both predictions with an experiment whose results corroborated the model. We conclude the paper by emphasizing the role played by procedural knowledge and evaluation mechanisms in explaining some implicit learning phenomena.

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