Nico Daniele, Daprati Elena
Dipartimento di Psicologia, Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza", Italia.
Dipartimento di Medicina dei Sistemi &CBMS, Università degli Studi di Roma Tor Vergata, Italia.
Sci Rep. 2015 Nov 4;5:16156. doi: 10.1038/srep16156.
Current theories describe learning in terms of cognitive or associative mechanisms. To assess whether cognitive mechanisms interact with automaticity of associative processes we devised a shape-discrimination task in which participants received both explicit instructions and implicit information. Instructions further allowed for the inference that a first event would precede the target. Albeit irrelevant to respond, this event acted as response prime and implicit spatial cue (i.e. it predicted target location). To modulate cognitive involvement, in three experiments we manipulated modality and salience of the spatial cue. Results always showed evidence for a priming effect, confirming that the first stimulus was never ignored. More importantly, although participants failed to consciously recognize the association, responses to spatially cued trials became either slower or faster depending on salience of the first event. These findings provide an empirical demonstration that cognitive and associative learning mechanisms functionally co-exist and interact to regulate behaviour.
当前理论从认知或联想机制的角度描述学习。为了评估认知机制是否与联想过程的自动性相互作用，我们设计了一项形状辨别任务，在该任务中，参与者既接受明确的指示，也接收隐含信息。指示进一步允许推断第一个事件将先于目标出现。尽管该事件与反应无关，但它充当了反应启动因素和隐含空间线索（即它预测目标位置）。为了调节认知参与度，在三个实验中，我们操纵了空间线索的模态和显著性。结果始终显示出启动效应的证据，证实第一个刺激从未被忽视。更重要的是，尽管参与者未能有意识地识别这种关联，但根据第一个事件的显著性，对空间线索试验的反应要么变慢，要么变快。这些发现提供了一个实证证明，即认知和联想学习机制在功能上共存并相互作用以调节行为。
