Assessing explicit processes does not influence the magnitude of implicit processes

AbstractThe cerebellum is known to be critically involved in sensorimotor adaptation. Changes in cerebellar function alter behaviour when compensating for sensorimotor perturbations, as shown by non-invasive stimulation of the cerebellum and studies involving patients with cerebellar degeneration. It is known, 24 however, that behavioural responses to sensorimotor perturbations reflect both explicit processes (such as volitional aiming to one side of a target to counteract a rotation of visual feedback) and implicit, error-driven updating of sensorimotor maps. The contribution of the cerebellum to these explicit and implicit processes remains unclear. Here, we examined the role of the cerebellum in sensorimotor adaptation to a 30° rotation of visual feedback of hand position during target-reaching, when the capacity to use explicit processes was manipulated by controlling movement preparation times. Explicit re-aiming was suppressed in one condition by requiring subjects to initiate their movements within 300ms of target presentation, and permitted in another condition by requiring subjects to wait approximately 1050ms after target presentation before movement initiation. Similar to previous work, applying anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS; 1.5mA) to the right cerebellum during adaptation resulted in faster compensation for errors imposed by the rotation. After exposure to the rotation, we evaluated implicit remapping in no-feedback trials after providing participants with explicit knowledge that the rotation had been removed. Crucially, movements were more adapted in these no-feedback trials following cerebellar anodal tDCS than after sham stimulation in both long and short preparation groups. This suggests that cerebellar anodal tDCS increased implicit remapping during sensorimotor adaptation irrespective of preparation time constraints. This work shows that the cerebellum is critical in the formation of new visuomotor maps that correct perturbations in sensory feedback, both when explicit processes are suppressed and when allowed during sensorimotor adaptation.

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Explicit knowledge and learning in SLA

AILA Review ◽

10.1075/aila.23.02roe ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 23 ◽

pp. 7-29 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Karen Roehr

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Linguistics ◽

Explicit Knowledge ◽

Human Mind ◽

Implicit Processes ◽

Starting Point ◽

Explicit Processes ◽

L2 Development ◽

Explicit Processing ◽

Implicit And Explicit ◽

Explicit And Implicit Knowledge

SLA researchers agree that explicit knowledge and learning play an important role in adult L2 development. In the field of cognitive linguistics, it has been proposed that implicit and explicit knowledge differ in terms of their internal category structure and the processing mechanisms that operate on their representation in the human mind. It has been hypothesized that linguistic constructions which are captured easily by metalinguistic descriptions can be learned successfully through explicit processes, resulting in accurate use. However, increased accuracy of use arising from greater reliance on explicit processing may lead to decreased fluency. Taking these hypotheses as a starting point, I present a case study of an adult L2 learner whose development of oral proficiency was tracked over 17 months. Findings indicate that explicit knowledge and learning have benefits as well as limitations. Use of metalinguistic tools was associated with increased accuracy; moreover, there was no obvious trade-off between accuracy and fluency. At the same time, resource-intensive explicit processing may impose too great a cognitive load in certain circumstances, apparently resulting in implicit processes taking over. I conclude that explicit and implicit knowledge and learning should be considered together in order to gain a full understanding of L2 development.

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Implicit and Explicit Learning: Differential Effects of Affective States

Perceptual and Motor Skills ◽

10.2466/pms.1994.79.1.163 ◽

1994 ◽

Vol 79 (1) ◽

pp. 163-184 ◽

Cited By ~ 19

Author(s):

Jill H. Rathus ◽

Arthur S. Reber ◽

Louis Manza ◽

Michael Kushner

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Processes ◽

Affective States ◽

Implicit Processes ◽

Performance Deficits ◽

Explicit Processes ◽

Human Functioning ◽

Implicit And Explicit ◽

Implicit And Explicit Learning ◽

Subclinical Depression

Two experiments using a standard artificial grammar paradigm were conducted to examine the role of affective states, specifically anxiety and depression, on implicit learning. The main purpose was to broaden the range of human functioning explored through the application of the robustness principle in the evolutionary framework recently developed by Reber which predicts that cognitive processes which rely upon unconscious, implicit processes should be less affected by affective states than those which rely upon conscious, explicit processes. In Study 1 ( N = 60), high test anxiety was associated with performance deficits in the explicit components of the task; no differences were found in the implicit phases of the task. In Study 2 ( N = 160), varying levels of subclinical depression were unrelated to both implicit and explicit functioning. The contrasting findings of the two studies are discussed in terms of the differential cognitive effects and adaptive implications of these two affective states.

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Delineating implicit and explicit processes in neurofeedback learning

10.31234/osf.io/gykex ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Santiago Muñoz-Moldes ◽

Axel Cleeremans

Keyword(s):

Neural Activity ◽

Brain Regions ◽

Special Focus ◽

Learning Mechanisms ◽

Implicit Processes ◽

Fine Grained ◽

Promising Tool ◽

Explicit Processes ◽

Implicit And Explicit

Neurofeedback allows humans to self-regulate neural activity in specific brain regions and is considered a promising tool for psychiatric interventions. Recently, methods have been developed to use neurofeedback implicitly, prompting a theoretical debate on the role of awareness in neurofeedback learning. We offer a critical review of the role of awareness in neurofeedback learning, with a special focus on recently developed neurofeedback paradigms. We detail differences in instructions and propose a fine-grained categorization of tasks based on the degree of involvement of explicit and implicit processes. Finally, we review the methods used to measure awareness in neurofeedback and propose new candidate measures. We conclude that explicit processes cannot be eschewed in most current implicit tasks that have explicit goals, and suggest ways in which awareness could be better measured in the future. Investigating awareness during learning will help understand the learning mechanisms underlying neurofeedback learning and will help shape future tasks.

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Separation of multiple motor memories through implicit and explicit processes

10.1101/2021.05.27.445962 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Gefen Dawidowicz ◽

Yuval Shaine ◽

Firas Mawase

Keyword(s):

Explicit Learning ◽

Contextual Cues ◽

Implicit Processes ◽

Motor Behaviors ◽

Explicit Processes ◽

Individual Contributions ◽

The Individual ◽

Dependent Learning ◽

Implicit And Explicit ◽

Task Irrelevant

Acquisition of multiple motor skills without interference is a remarkable ability in sport and daily life. During adaptation to opposing perturbations, a common paradigm to study this ability, each perturbation can be successfully learned when a dynamical contextual cue, such as a follow-through movement, is associated with the direction of the perturbation. It is still unclear, however, to what extent this context-dependent learning engages the cognitive strategy-based explicit process and the implicit process that occurs without conscious awareness. Here, we designed four reaching experiments to untangle the individual contributions of the explicit and implicit components while participants learned opposing visuomotor perturbations, with a second unperturbed follow-through movement that served as a contextual cue. In Exp. 1 we replicated previous adaptation results and showed that follow-through movements also allow learning for opposing visuomotor rotations. For one group of participants in Exp. 2 we isolated strategic explicit learning by inducing a 2-sec time delay between movement and end-point feedback, while for another group we isolated the implicit component using the task-irrelevant error-clamp paradigm, in which participants were firmly instructed to aim their reaches directly to the target. Our data showed that opposing perturbations could be fully learned by explicit strategies; but when strategy was restricted, distinct implicit processes contributed to learning. In Exp.3, we examined whether the learned motor behaviors are influenced by the disparity between the follow-through contexts. We found that the location of follow-through targets had little effect on total learning, yet it led to more instances in which participants failed to learn the task. In Exp. 4, we explored the generalization capability to untrained novel targets. Participants showed near-flat generalization of the implicit and explicit processes to adjacent targets. Overall, our results indicate that follow-through contextual cues influence activity of both implicit and explicit processes during separation of motor memories. Furthermore, the follow-through context might activate, in part, top-down cognitive factors that influence not only the dynamics of the explicit learning but also the implicit process.

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Use of explicit processes during a visually guided locomotor learning task predicts 24-hour retention after stroke

Journal of Neurophysiology ◽

10.1152/jn.00340.2020 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Margaret A French ◽

Susanne M. Morton ◽

Darcy S. Reisman

Keyword(s):

Visual Feedback ◽

Step Length ◽

Learning Task ◽

Learning Processes ◽

Healthy Adults ◽

Stroke Survivors ◽

Visually Guided ◽

Implicit Processes ◽

Explicit Processes ◽

Implicit And Explicit

Implicit and explicit processes can occur within a single locomotor learning task. The combination of these learning processes may impact how individuals acquire/retain the task. Because these learning processes rely on distinct neural pathways, neurologic conditions may selectively impact the processes that occur, thus, impacting learning and retention. Thus, our purpose was to examine the contribution of implicit and explicit processes during a visually guided walking task and characterize the relationship between explicit processes and performance/retention in stroke survivors and age-matched healthy adults. Twenty chronic stroke survivors and twenty healthy adults participated in a 2-day treadmill study. Day 1 included Baseline, Acquisition1, Catch, Acquisition2, and Immediate Retention phases and Day 2 included 24-hour Retention. During acquisition phases, subjects learned to take a longer step with one leg through distorted visual feedback. During Catch and retention phases, visual feedback was removed and subjects were instructed to walk normally (Catch) or how they walked during the acquisition phases (retention). Change in step length from Baseline to Catch represented implicit processes. Change in step length from Catch to the end of Acquisition2 represented explicit processes. A mixed ANOVA found no difference in the type of learning between groups (p=0.74). There was a significant relationship between explicit processes and 24-hour retention in stroke survivors (r=0.47, p=0.04), but not in healthy adults (r=0.34, p=0.15). These results suggest that stroke may not affect the underlying learning mechanisms used during locomotor learning, but that these mechanisms impact how well stroke survivors retain the new walking pattern.

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Separation of multiple motor memories through implicit and explicit processes

Journal of Neurophysiology ◽

10.1152/jn.00245.2021 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Gefen Dawidowicz ◽

Yuval Shaine ◽

Firas Mawase

Keyword(s):

Motor Skills ◽

Explicit Learning ◽

Contextual Cues ◽

Generalization Capability ◽

Implicit Processes ◽

Explicit Processes ◽

Individual Contributions ◽

The Individual ◽

Implicit And Explicit ◽

Explicit Process

Acquisition of multiple motor skills without interference is a remarkable ability in daily life. During adaptation to opposing perturbations, a common paradigm to study this ability, each perturbation can be successfully learned when a contextual follow-through movement is associated with the direction of the perturbation. It is still unclear, however, to what extent this learning engages the cognitive explicit process and the implicit process. Here, we untangled the individual contributions of the explicit and implicit components while participants learned opposing visuomotor perturbations, with a second unperturbed follow-through movement. In Exp. 1 we replicated previous adaptation results and showed that follow-through movements also allow learning for opposing visuomotor rotations. For one group of participants in Exp. 2 we isolated strategic explicit learning, while for another group we isolated the implicit component. Our data showed that opposing perturbations could be fully learned by explicit strategies; but when strategy was restricted, distinct implicit processes contributed to learning. In Exp.3, we examined whether learning is influenced by the disparity between the follow-through contexts. We found that the location of follow-through targets had little effect on total learning, yet it led to more instances in which participants failed to learn the task. In Exp. 4, we explored the generalization capability to untrained targets. Participants showed near-flat generalization of the implicit and explicit processes. Overall, our results indicate that follow-through contextual cues might activate, in part, top-down cognitive factors that influence not only the dynamics of the explicit learning, but also the implicit process.

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Patterns of Implicit Learning Below the Level of Conscious Knowledge

Journal of Psychophysiology ◽

10.1027/0269-8803/a000018 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 24 (2) ◽

pp. 91-101 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Juliana Yordanova ◽

Rolf Verleger ◽

Ullrich Wagner ◽

Vasil Kolev

Keyword(s):

Implicit Learning ◽

Explicit Knowledge ◽

Implicit Knowledge ◽

Knowledge Generation ◽

Sleep Stages ◽

Implicit Processing ◽

Implicit Processes ◽

Late Night ◽

On Line ◽

On Line Learning

The objective of the present study was to evaluate patterns of implicit processing in a task where the acquisition of explicit and implicit knowledge occurs simultaneously. The number reduction task (NRT) was used as having two levels of organization, overt and covert, where the covert level of processing is associated with implicit associative and implicit procedural learning. One aim was to compare these two types of implicit processes in the NRT when sleep was or was not introduced between initial formation of task representations and subsequent NRT processing. To assess the effects of different sleep stages, two sleep groups (early- and late-night groups) were used where initial training of the task was separated from subsequent retest by 3 h full of predominantly slow wave sleep (SWS) or rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. In two no-sleep groups, no interval was introduced between initial and subsequent NRT performance. A second aim was to evaluate the interaction between procedural and associative implicit learning in the NRT. Implicit associative learning was measured by the difference between the speed of responses that could or could not be predicted by the covert abstract regularity of the task. Implicit procedural on-line learning was measured by the practice-based increased speed of performance with time on task. Major results indicated that late-night sleep produced a substantial facilitation of implicit associations without modifying individual ability for explicit knowledge generation or for procedural on-line learning. This was evidenced by the higher rate of subjects who gained implicit knowledge of abstract task structure in the late-night group relative to the early-night and no-sleep groups. Independently of sleep, gain of implicit associative knowledge was accompanied by a relative slowing of responses to unpredictable items suggesting reciprocal interactions between associative and motor procedural processes within the implicit system. These observations provide evidence for the separability and interactions of different patterns of processing within implicit memory.

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