Smith Edward E
Department of Psychology, Columbia University, New York, New York 10027, USA.
Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci. 2008 Mar;8(1):3-16. doi: 10.3758/cabn.8.1.3.
This article evaluates the evidence regarding the claim that people can learn a novel category implicitly--that is, by an implicit memory system that is qualitatively different from an explicit system. The evidence that is considered is based on the prototype extraction task, in which participants are first exposed to a set of category exemplars under incidental learning instructions and are then required to categorize novel test items. Knowlton and Squire (1993) first reported that memory-impaired patients performed normally on the prototype extraction task while being impaired on a comparable recognition task. Several studies have replicated these results, but other articles have criticized the evidence for implicit category learning on both methodological and theoretical grounds. In this article, we consider five of these criticisms-for example, that the normal performance of the patients is due to intact working memory mechanisms (see, e.g., Palmeri & Flannery, 1999) or to the lesser cognitive demands of prototype extraction rather than recognition (e.g., Nosofsky & Zaki, 1998). For each of the five criticisms, we offer counterevidence that supports implicit category learning.
本文评估了有关人们能够隐性学习新类别这一说法的证据——也就是说，通过一种在性质上不同于显性系统的隐性记忆系统来学习。所考虑的证据基于原型提取任务，在该任务中，参与者首先在附带学习指令下接触一组类别范例，然后被要求对新的测试项目进行分类。诺尔顿和斯奎尔（1993年）首次报告称，记忆受损患者在原型提取任务上表现正常，而在类似的识别任务上则受损。多项研究重复了这些结果，但其他文章从方法和理论两方面批评了隐性类别学习的证据。在本文中，我们考虑了其中五条批评意见——例如，患者的正常表现是由于完整的工作记忆机制（例如，见帕尔梅里和弗兰纳里，1999年），或者是由于原型提取而非识别对认知的要求较低（例如，诺索夫斯基和扎基，1998年）。针对这五条批评意见中的每一条，我们都提供了支持隐性类别学习的反证。
