We often think of learning as a conscious and effortful process that is inextricably linked to memory. However, learning can also take place without awareness and explicit instructions. This is known as implicit learning, and it is one of our fundamental cognitive abilities. For example, children acquire complex language rules spontaneously, without much explicit instruction.

An interesting question is whether this type of learning is related to memory capacity. We set out to investigate this question in our study. To do so, we used the eye tracker to measure whether our participants acquired knowledge about patterns without explicit instruction. Our results demonstrate that implicit learning and memory interact in intriguing ways. You can read all about it in our paper which has just appeared in Psychological Research and can be read for free using this link.

In line with the Open Data policy of our project, data can be downloaded from the library's repository and code is on our GitHub page.

Enjoy!

Srdan