Norman, E. 1 , Scott, R. 2 , Jones, E. 1 , Price, M. 1 & Dienes, Z. 2
1 Faculty of Psychology, University of Bergen, Norway
2 University of Sussex, Brighton, UK
Strategic control over the application of knowledge is traditionally regarded as indicating conscious access to that knowledge (Jacoby, 1991). The current study challenges this assumption by providing evidence from artificial grammar learning (AGL) indicating that unconscious structural knowledge of two grammars can be strategically controlled. In two AGL experiments all participants were trained on two different grammars. Instructions as to which grammar to apply varied randomly between individual trials of a subsequent test phase. The nature of each grammar was disguised by random variation in irrelevant properties of individual string elements. Whether structural knowledge of the grammars was conscious or unconscious was measured in two different ways. In Experiment 1 (N=72) participants reported their decision strategy after each classification response, and reported their degree of awareness of the nature of the rule in a post-experimental questionnaire. In Experiment 2 (N=72) participants made two judgements after each classification response: They reported (a) their decision strategy, and (b) which stimulus property their decision was related to. In Experiment 1, strategic control was found even among participants who expressed unawareness of the nature of the grammar rule, e.g., who reported that the rule was related to colours when in fact colours were irrelevant to the grammar. These participants showed an advantage for trials attributed to “implicit” decision strategies, i.e., random choice, familiarity, or intuition. In Experiment 2, participants also showed strategic control for "implicit" classifications. This was the case even for implicit classifications attributed to irrelevant stimulus properties, e.g. attributing a judgment to an intuition related to colours when in fact colours were irrelevant to the grammar. Findings are interpreted within the framework of "fringe consciousness" (Norman et al., 2007), and as exemplifying the dissociation between consciousness of judgement knowledge versus consciousness of structural knowledge (Dienes & Scott, 2005).