Related is research into implicit learning (Knowlton &
Squire, 1996; Reber & Squire, 1994). Implicit learning occurs,
not through the agency of preattentive processes, but in the
absence of awareness that learning has occurred, at any level
within the cognitive system. For example, after exposure to
“sentences” consisting of letter sequences that do or do not conform
to the rules of an artificial grammar, subjects are able to
discriminate, significantly above chance, grammatical from nongrammatical
sentences they have not seen before. They can do
this even though they are not aware of the rules of the grammar,
deny that they have learned anything and typically report that
they are guessing (Reber, 1989). Liu (2002) has replicated this
effect using artificial grammars that determine the structure of
color patterns as well as letter sequences. The fact that learning
can occur without people being aware of it is, in hindsight,
not surprising. But while this finding has, to date, escaped the
attention of mainstream cognitive psychology, its implications
are wide-reaching for teaching and learning, with or without
the support of technology.