L4 - Learning and conscious awareness

Question 1

What is the Perruchet effect (1985)?

Answer 1

• Pts strapped up to set of headphones connected to air puff device which blows air into pts eye
• Can measure how much pts blink when they hear the tone
• Can measure pts expectancy of air puffs (propositional knowledge)
• Some trials had tone and air puff others had tone no air puff
• Perruchet noted that people have a tendency to show a gambler’s fallacy effect (incorrectly believe that a random event is more likely to occur if it has not occurred recently)

Question 2

What did Squire (1987) do?

Answer 2

Makes distinction between declarative and non-declarative memory and noted potential brain regions that might control these different forms of learning
- Argued that damage to specific regions leads to selective impairments - eg if have deficit in temporal lobe will lose ability to form discreet declarative facts about the world but should show intact ability about classical conditioning

Question 3

What is implicit learning?

Answer 3

Learning that takes place incidentally in the absence of deliberate hypothesis-testing strategies
- learning without intent to learn; passive learning

Question 4

What is the problem with studying amnesic patients?

Answer 4

• Too difficult to find, sample sizes are low
• Patients have varied conditions/impairments

Question 5

What is dissociation logic?

Answer 5

• Want to show dissociation between two diff measures of knowledge
• The logic is that one measure reflects unconscious processes, while the other reflects conscious processes

Question 6

What is the “implicit measure in the serial reaction time task?”

Answer 6

The difference in reaction time between sequence and random trials