The Effects of Implicit, Explicit, and Synergistic Training on Learning an Artificial Grammar

ionist Theory Abstractionist theorists contend that acquisition of implicit knowledge occurs through the induction of rules governing the construction of a complex structured domain without conscious reflection to do so (Reber, 1989). The abstraction theorists provide evidence for this view through the numerous studies that have demonstrated transfer (Knowlton and Squire, 1994; Mathews et. al., 1989; Reber, 1969). Transfer is the ability to continue applying knowledge correctly when the surface structure (letter set in artificial grammars) is changed before the testing phase but the underlying rules (the same artificial grammar) remain the same (Reber, 1969). The ability of transfer has the abstractionist theorists believing that the underlying rules from the grammar were learned and not just surface structure similarities (Mathews et al., 1989; Reber, 1969). The abstractionist theory is the oldest view concerning how implicit knowledge is acquired (Reber, 1967). In the beginning the abstractionist theory (Reber, 1969) contended that implicit learners acquire implicit knowledge because they formed a (nonconscious) mental representation of the rules used by the researchers to generate the letter strings. This representative knowledge was said to be acquired, stored, and used to guide responses.