Resolving the Conflict between Two Implicitly Learned Regularities

This study is dedicated to the investigation of interaction of conscious and unconscious processes in artificial grammar learning. The main problem: how the conflict between two implicitly learned regularities contained in stimuli influences classification of them. The results of the experiment suggest that subjects implicitly learned not only the rules of artificial grammar, but also the hidden hint (a small font lengthiness). In the case of contradiction between the rules of grammar and the hidden hint subjects switched their strategy of task performance to an analytical one, being unaware of this contradiction. It was manifested in reduction of “yes” answers and, as a consequence, in reduction of the level of “false alarms”. This result suggests that a collision with stimuli that provoke conflict between implicitly acquired knowledge enhances the conscious control over the task performance.