This book explores unintentional learning from an information-processing perspective.

Research on implicit learning - a cognitive phenomenon in which people acquire knowledge without conscious intent or awareness - has been growing exponentially. This volume draws together this research, offering the first complete reference on implicit learning by those who have been instrumental in shaping the field. The contributors explore controversies in the field, and examine: functional characteristics, brain mechanisms and neurological foundations of implicit learning; connectionist models; and applications of implicit learning to acquiring new mental skills.

While widely studied, the capacity of the human mind remains largely unexplored. As such, researchers are continually seeking ways to understand the brain, its function, and its impact on human behavior. Exploring Implicit Cognition: Learning, Memory, and Social Cognitive Processes explores research surrounding the ways in which an individual’s unconscious is able to influence and impact that person’s behavior without their awareness. Focusing on topics pertaining to social cognition and the unconscious process, this title is ideal for use by students, researchers, psychologists, and academicians interested in the latest insights into implicit cognition.

Can we learn without knowing we are learning? To what extent is our behavior influenced by things we fail to perceive? What is the relationship between conscious and unconscious cognition? Implicit Learning: 50 Years On tackles these key questions, fifty years after the publication of Arthur Reber’s seminal text. Providing an overview of recent developments in the field, the volume considers questions about the computational foundations of learning, alongside phenomena including conditioning, memory formation and consolidation, associative learning, cognitive development, and language learning. Featuring contributions from international researchers, the book uniquely integrates ‘Western’ thinking on implicit learning with insights from a rich Russian research tradition. This approach offers an excellent opportunity to contrast perspectives, to introduce new experimental paradigms, and to contribute to ongoing debates about the very nature of implicit learning. Implicit Learning: 50 Years On is essential reading for students and researchers of consciousness, specifically those interested in implicit learning.

The implicit/ explicit distinction is central to our understanding of the nature of L2 acquisition. This book begins with an account of how this distinction applies to L2 learning, knowledge and instruction. It then reports a series of studies describing the development of a battery of tests providing relatively discrete measurements of L2 explicit/ implicit knowledge. These tests were then utilized to examine a number of key issues in SLA - the learning difficulty of different grammatical structures, the role of L2 implicit/ explicit knowledge in language proficiency, the relationship between learning experiences and learners’ language knowledge profiles, the metalinguistic knowledge of teacher trainees and the effects of different types of form-focused instruction on L2 acquisition. The book concludes with a consideration of how the tests can be further developed and applied in the study of L2 acquisition.

The Handbook of Second Language Acquisition presents an integrated discussion of key, and sometimes controversial, issues in second language acquisition research. Discusses the biological and cognitive underpinnings of SLA, mechanisms, processes, and constraints on SLA, the level of ultimate attainment, research methods, and the status of SLA as a cognitive science. Includes contributions from twenty-seven of the world's leading scholars. Provides an invaluable resource for all students and scholars of human cognition, including those in linguistics, psychology, applied linguistics, ESL, foreign languages, and cognitive science.

Attention and Implicit Learning provides a comprehensive overview of the research conducted in this area. The book is conceived as a multidisciplinary forum of discussion on the question of whether implicit learning may be depicted as a process that runs independently of attention. The volume also deals with the complementary question of whether implicit learning affects the dynamics of attention, and it addresses these questions from perspectives that range from functional to neuroscientific and computational approaches. The view of implicit learning that arises from these pages is not that of a mysterious faculty, but rather that of an elementary ability of the cognitive systems to extract the structure of their environment as it appears directly through experience, and regardless of any intention to do so. Implicit learning, thus, is taken to be a process that may shape not only our behavior, but also our representations of the world, our attentional functions, and even our conscious experience. (Series B)