How does prior knowledge affect implicit and explicit concept learning?

Abstract

Two experiments investigated the effect of prior knowledge on implicit and explicit learning. Implicit as opposed to explicit learning is sometimes characterized as unselective or purely statistical. During training, one group of participants was presented with category exemplars whose features could be tied together by integrative knowledge, whereas another group saw category exemplars with unrelated feature combinations. Half of the participants in each group learned these categories under a secondary-task condition (meant to discourage explicit learning), and the remaining half performed the categorization task under a single-task condition (meant to favour explicit learning). In a test phase, participants classified only the individual features of the training exemplars. Secondary- as opposed to single-task conditions impaired explicit but not implicit knowledge (as determined by subjective measures). Importantly, prior knowledge resulted in increased amounts of both implicit and explicit knowledge.

This work was completed in partial fulfilment for the requirements of a D.Phil thesis at the University of Sussex and was funded by a Scholarship from the Greek State Scholarships Foundation (IKY).

Notes

¹ However, as Palmeri and Blalock (2000) point out, the rapid influence of background knowledge on categorization may generalize only in cases where background knowledge has a perceptual basis, and categories consist of perceptual features rather than of verbal descriptions. Instead, when verbal and semantically rich stimuli like Smith and Sloman's (1994) stimuli or like the present stimuli are used, prior knowledge might involve a rather reflective and effortful process.