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Knowledge applied to new domains: the unconscious succeeds where the conscious fails

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-07, 17:58 authored by Ryan ScottRyan Scott, Zoltan DienesZoltan Dienes
A common view holds that consciousness is needed for knowledge acquired in one domain to be applied in a novel domain We present evidence for the opposite, where the transfer of knowledge is achieved only in the absence of conscious awareness. Knowledge of artificial grammars was examined where training and testing occurred in different vocabularies or modalities. In all conditions grammaticality judgments attributed to random,;election showed above-chance accuracy (60%), while those attributed to conscious decisions did not Participants also rated each string's familiarity and performed a perceptual task assessing fluency. Familiarity was predicted by repetition Structure and was thus related to grammaticality Fluency, though increasing familiarity, was unrelated to grammaticality. While familiarity predicted all judgments only those attributed to random !,election showed a significant additional contribution of grammaticality. deriving primarily from chunk novelty In knowledge transfer, as in visual perception (Marcel, 1993). the unconscious may outperform the conscious

History

Publication status

  • Published

Journal

Consciousness and Cognition

ISSN

1053-8100

Publisher

Elsevier

Issue

1

Volume

19

Page range

391-398

Department affiliated with

  • Psychology Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2012-02-06

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