Abstract
Typically developing children aged 5 to 8 years were exposed to artificial grammar learning. Following an implicit exposure phase, half of the participants received neutral instructions at test while the other half received instructions making a direct, explicit reference to the training phase. We first aimed to assess whether implicit learning operated in the two test conditions. We then evaluated the differential impact of age on learning performances as a function of test instructions. The results showed that performance did not vary as a function of age in the implicit instructions condition, while age effects emerged when explicit instructions were employed at test. However, performance was affected differently by age and the instructions given at test, depending on whether the implicit learning of short or long units was assessed. These results suggest that the claim that the implicit learning process is independent of age needs to be revised.
Highlights
Implicit learning covers all forms of learning that operate without individuals intentionally deciding to learn or being aware that they are modifying their long-term behavior
The results show that participants recognize grammatical strings at a significantly abovechance level, as if they had discovered the rules of the grammar
In the explicit instructions condition, the 5-years-olds’ performance remained at chance level, t,1, whereas the 8-yearolds’ production of grammatical trigrams was significantly above chance, t(13) = 4.28, p
Summary
Implicit learning covers all forms of learning that operate without individuals intentionally deciding to learn or being aware that they are modifying their long-term behavior. Roter [9], cited by Reber [5], observed invariant learning performance on an artificial grammar paradigm in 6 to 7, 9 to 11 and 12 to 15-year-old children. The results show that participants recognize grammatical strings at a significantly abovechance level, as if they had discovered the rules of the grammar These findings were subsequently confirmed by Fischer [10] in 9 to 11-year-olds and by Lopez-Ramon [11] in children aged from 7 to 12 years. The robustness of these results has been demonstrated in serial reaction time tasks, another classical paradigm used to study implicit learning [12]. Support for age-independent implicit learning processes has been provided by studies involving elderly people showing that young and old adults exhibit similar implicit learning capacities (e.g. [20,21])
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