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. 2016 Jan;2016(1):niw016.
doi: 10.1093/nc/niw016. Epub 2016 Oct 2.

Unconscious associative learning with conscious cues

Affiliations

Unconscious associative learning with conscious cues

Andrea Alamia et al. Neurosci Conscious. 2016 Jan.

Abstract

Despite extensive research, the very existence of unconscious learning in humans remains much debated. Skepticism arises chiefly from the difficulty in assessing the level of awareness of the complex associations learned in classical implicit learning paradigms. Here, we show that simple associations between colors and motion directions can be learned unconsciously. In each trial, participants had to report the motion direction of a patch of colored dots but unbeknownst to the participants, two out of the three possible colors were always associated with a given direction/response, while one was uninformative. We confirm the lack of awareness by using several tasks, fulfilling the most stringent criteria. In addition, we show the crucial role of trial-by-trial feedback, and that both the stimulus-response (motor) and stimulus-stimulus (perceptual) associations were learned. In conclusion, we demonstrate that simple associations between supraliminal stimulus features can be learned unconsciously, providing a novel framework to study unconscious learning.

Keywords: Unconscious learning; consciousness; implicit learning; motion discrimination; reinforcement learning.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Schematic depiction of the unconscious learning framework (a) and experimental design (b). In the scheme (a), the x-axis represents the stimulus perceptibility (subliminal or supraliminal) and the y-axis represents the rules complexity (simple–complex rules). Within this space, we define four possible categories of unconscious learning paradigms. In the lower part (b), the experimental design is shown: following a fixation cross displayed for 600 ms, a patch of moving dots was displayed for 300 ms. The participants had 500 ms to provide a response.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Performance data from Experiment 1. Error bars represent standard errors. The colors represent the two conditions (red: informative color condition, blue: nonpredictive color condition). The violation of the association in block 16th and 17th is marked by the light green rectangle. The performance during the “perceptual training” phase with white patches (blocks 1 to 7) is not displayed.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Accuracy data from Experiment 2. In the upper part, the data from the group of subjects who did not provide the correct associations in the questionnaire is shown (implicit group, n  =  18), whereas all the participants are included in the data shown in the lower panel (n  =  23). Error bars represent standard errors. E1 and E2 are two blocks in which participants were instructed about the associations. The data from the “perceptual training” phase with white patches (from 1 to 7) is not displayed in the figure.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Results from the awareness testing tasks. The data from the participants who did not respond correctly to the questionnaire (implicit group, n  =  18) is shown on the left, whereas all participants are included in the dataset shown on the right (n  =  23). Participants were split based on whether they performed the awareness testing tasks before (light colors) or after (darker colors) the questionnaire. Results from the generative motion task (a): on the y-axis, the probability of choosing rightward motion is shown. The results from the generative color task are displayed in the middle part (b): values on the y-axis represent the probability of choosing either of the three color conditions displayed along the x-axis (congruent, incongruent, or neutral color). In the last part (c) the results from the familiarity task are shown: on the y-axis, the average familiarity ratings associated with the three different types of patches are shown (correct predictive association, incorrect association, or nonpredictive association).
Figure 5
Figure 5
Performance data from Experiment 3. The informative/noninformative colors are represented in red/blue. Error bars represent standard errors. The violation of the association in block 16th and 17th is marked by the light green rectangle. The data from the “perceptual training” phase with white patches (from 1 to 7) is not displayed.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Performance in Experiment 4. In the upper panel, the data from the group in which the color–motion association was kept constant (n  =  12) is shown, and in the lower panel the data from the group in which the color–response association was kept constant is represented (n  =  12). The red and blue dots correspond to the informative and noninformative colors, respectively. Error bars represent standard errors, and violation of the association in block 16th and 17th is marked by the light green rectangle. The data from the “perceptual training” phase with white patches (from 1 to 8) is not displayed in the figure.

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