Abstract

In everyday life, there is considerable need for rule learning. Behavioral and human brain imaging studies have explored the psychological processes implicit and explicit learning and transfer in a biconditional grammar using three types of training conditions: memorization versus two versions of hypothesis-testing. After training, all participants performed the same three classification tasks: Task 1: categorizing strings made of the same set of letters and rules as in training; Task 2: different set of letters and same rules and Task 3: different set of letters and rules. Results comparing performance on the three tasks showed that participants trained in the new version of the hypothesis-testing condition performed better on all three tasks. On Tasks 1 and 2, participants made use of patterns within the strings that were related to the general rule, called secondary rules. Use of secondary rules explained a large proportion of the variance in all three groups of participants. Only the new Hypothesis-testing group showed the same pattern of endorsement in both Tasks 1 and 2, indicating transfer of learning. Participants were making use of secondary rules in an earlier stage, until they learn the most general rule. If this process is continuum, in the first step, participants recognize and endorse all types of secondary rules; in the second step, they only endorse those that do not violate another type of secondary rule; on the final step, they are able to state the most general rule of the grammar.