Riedel, F. 1 , Kerz, E. 1 & Wiechmann, D. 2
1 RWTH Aachen University
2 University of Amsterdam
There is a long-standing tradition in the study of the role of implicit and explicit learning in second language acquisition. A key challenge in the demonstration of learning without awareness concerns the identification of reliable experimental paradigms that induce scenarios that afford incidental learning. Building on design components described in prior research, which has produced mixed results, we used an online crowd-sourcing platform to conduct a two-alternative forced-choice experiment targeting the incidental learning of form-meaning alignments, which alleviates some problematic aspects of prior designs. To minimize the possibility of including subjects that developed some degree of task awareness, the experiment included a filtering procedure comprising a pre-task cloze test gating mechanism and three post-test measures of awareness: retrospective verbal reports, confidence ratings, and source attributions. The performance of the subjects in the forced-choice task (N=124) was investigated using generalized additive models, which were used to avoid the problematic steps of a priori estimation of response curve shape. Even though the design was strongly biased against the possibility of wrongly inspecting the behavior of participants who developed some degree of awareness, our results suggest the presence of a weak but statistically significant effect of incidental learning.