Bertels, J. 1, 2 , Franco, A. 1, 3 , San Anton, M. E. 1 & Destrebecqz, A. 1
1 Université libre de Bruxelles
2 FRS/FNRS (Belgique)
3 FNR (Luxembourg)
In visual statistical learning (VSL), participants learn the statistical regularities present in a sequence of visual shapes. A recent study (Kim, Seitz, Feenstra, & Shams, 2009) suggests that VSL occurs implicitly as it is not accompanied by conscious awareness of these regularities. However, Kim et al.’s conclusion depends on two unwarranted assumptions concerning the nature and the sensitivity of the tasks used to measure participants’ knowledge of the regularities. In a replication of this study, we used a Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) task as an indirect measure of learning, as well as a direct measure consisting in a four-choice completion task. Crucially, binary confidence judgments were also recorded after each completion trial, in order to systematically measure the extent to which sequence knowledge was available to consciousness. Our results show that a subset of participants who learned the regularities between shapes do not have conscious access to their knowledge. In most cases, however, we observed a significant correlation between performance and confidence, suggesting that participants were conscious of the knowledge they were using in the completion task.