Adding the goal to learn strengthens learning in an unintentional learning task

Abstract

Previous research has demonstrated that contingency learning can take place in the absence of the intention to learn. For instance, in the color-word contingency learning task, each distracting word is presented most often in a given target color (e.g., "month" in red and "plate" in green), and less often in the other colors. Participants respond more quickly and accurately when the word is presented in the expected rather than an unexpected color, even though there is no reason why they would have the intention to learn the contingencies between the words and the colors. It remains to be determined, however, whether learning in such situations would benefit or suffer from adding the goal to learn contingencies. In the reported experiment, half of the participants were informed that each word was presented most often in a certain color, and they were instructed to try to learn these contingencies. The other half of the participants were not informed that contingencies would be present. The participants given the learning goal produced a larger response time contingency effect than did the control participants. In contrast to some results from other learning paradigms, these results suggest that intentional learning adds to, rather than interferes with, unintentional learning, and we propose an explanation for some of the conflicting results.Keywords Implicit learning . Human memory . Automaticity . GoalsWithin the literature on human contingency learning (Schmidt, 2012), several paradigms have emerged that have proved useful in the study of unintentional-learning processes. One example of this is the color-word contingency learning paradigm introduced by Schmidt and colleagues (Schmidt & Besner, 2008;Schmidt, Crump, Cheesman, & Besner, 2007; Schmidt & De Houwer, 2012, in press;Schmidt, De Houwer, & Besner, 2010). In this paradigm, each distracting word is presented most often in a certain target color (e.g., "month" most often in red, "plate" most often in green), and participants respond more quickly and accurately to trials in which the word is presented in its high-contingency color (e.g., "month" in red) rather than a low-contingency color (e.g., "month" in green). Contingency awareness is generally quite limited in this paradigm, and learning often seems to occur without awareness: Participants who say that they are not aware of the contingencies and who do not guess above chance which words went with which colors still show the effect (Schmidt et al., 2007). Because participants are typically unaware of the contingencies, it is unlikely that they have the intention to learn them. Moreover, the instructions remain silent about the presence of the contingencies, and participants are thus not asked to learn them. One could argue that participants might still form the intention to learn the contingencies in order to improve their performance in the response time task. However, the response time task is so simple (i.e., reacting to colors) and response times are so short that an intentional strategy to...

Contingency Learning Tracks With Stimulus-Response Proportion

“…Interestingly, participants generally have very low levels of contingency awareness in this task (Schmidt & De Houwer, 2012a, 2012b, 2012c, 2012d, similar to other tasks (e.g., Destrebecqz & Cleeremans, 2001;Lewicki, 1985;McKelvie, 1987;Miller, 1987).…”

Learning, awareness, and instruction: Subjective contingency awareness does matter in the colour-word contingency learning paradigm

“…Using the highly simplistic colour-word contingency learning paradigm, Schmidt and De Houwer (2012a) gave half the participants the goal to learn contingencies (i.e., they were not told the actual pairings, but asked to discover them). These participants showed a larger contingency effect than controls.…”

“…One example of this is the colour-word contingency learning paradigm of Schmidt and colleagues (Schmidt & Besner, 2008;Schmidt, Crump, Cheesman, & Besner, 2007;Schmidt & De Houwer, 2012a, 2012b, 2012cSchmidt, De Houwer, & Besner, 2010). In this colour identification paradigm, each of a set of neutral words is presented most often in a certain print colour (e.g., "month" in red, "plate" in green, etc.).…”

Questioning conflict adaptation: proportion congruent and Gratton effects reconsidered

“…Said differently, words end up being predictive of their congruent response (e.g., BLUE is predictive of a blue response because it is presented in blue QUESTIONING CONFLICT ADAPTATION 24 most often). Even in non-conflict tasks, any such predictive word-response relationships will be rapidly learned by participants (e.g., Schmidt & De Houwer, 2012a, 2012b, 2012cSchmidt, De Houwer, & Besner, 2010). With such contingency biases in the task, congruent trials are high contingency (predictive of the correct response) and incongruent trials are low contingency (not predictive).…”