The Influence Of Stimulus Presentation Channels And Selective Attention On Implicit Learning

Implicit learning has always been a hot topic in the field of cognitive psychology.Whether implicit learning is subserved by a single,domain-general mechanism or instead consists of multiple task-or stimulus-specific subsystems is unclear.Whether selective attention is demand for implicit learning to occur remains controversial.To make clear of these problems furtherly,further research need to be done.The present dissertation which include four studies explored the neural mechanisms of single modality and dual modality and the effect of selective attention on multi-implicit learning.Using Artificial Grammar Learning task,Study 1 explored the neural mechanism difference between visual and auditory implicit learning by event correlated potential technique.The results showed that implicit learning was modality-specific and performance of vision implicit learning was better than auditory implicit learning.The superiority effect of visual implicit learning was verified by electrophysiological index P600 which showed the amplitude of visual learning was higher than that of auditory learning,and P600 latency of the visual is shorter than that of the auditory.On the basis of study 1,study 2 explored the dual modality implicit learning by presenting two sequences flow simultaneously with the same rules or different rules in the audio-visual channel.If the implicit learning is a unified processing mechanism,audio and visual modality processing sequence rules would affect each other.If the implicit learning are parallel and independent multiple subsystem processing mechanisms,dual modality processing at the same time would not affect each other.The results showed that participants could track the rules in two sensory channels regardless of whether the rules were same or different.And ERP amplitude and latency were not different between single-modality learning and dual-modality learning.The results indicated that the implicit learning of multiple modality can occur simultaneously and independently,which may indicated the existence of multiple learning subsystems.On the basis of study 2,two set of stimuli-the sequence of letters and digits-with different grammatical rules were presented in the same modality by dichotic technique in Study 3.And participants were asked to follow and memorize one ear of information.Study 3 investigated the effect of selective attention on auditory implicit learning.The results showed that selective attention were required in auditory implicit learning,only the sequence which was selective attended could be learned implicitly.On the basis of Study 3,the stimuli flows were extended from two to three in Study 4.How selective attention affected implicit learning when the stimuli environment varied from simple to complicate.The results showed that the selective attention affected implicit learning,only the selective attended stimuli could be learned.When the amount of background information was consistent,the less of the selected processing objects,the better the implicit learning effect.The number of background information could improve or decrease the effect of selective attention on implicit learning,if the number of processing information was the same,the more of the background information,the better the implicit learning effect.Four studies came to the following conclusions:(1)Implicit learning is modality-specific.(2)Implicit learning of multiple modality can occur simultaneously and independently,which may indicate the existence of multiple learning subsystems.(3)Selective attention affects implicit learning,the occurenc of implicit learning needs selective attention.(4)The amount of background information and the number of objects to be processed affect implicit learning.When the amount of background information is consistent,the less of the selected processing objects,the better the implicit learning effect.The number of background information can improve or decrease the effect of selective attention on implicit learning,if the number of processing information is the same,the more of the background information,the better the implicit learning effect.