Implicit Learning
Even though we are not aware of it, we constantly extract the statistical regularities in our environment. For example, we learn certain regularities of a language without actually realising it. This type of implicit learning (or statistical learning) occurs everyday, everywhere without engaging much, if any, deliberate conscious effort. It allows us to give structure to the world around us, which makes the world predictable, manageable and coherent. Although we already know a lot about ‘statistical learning’ when learning a language or, for example, when learning complex movements, we still don’t know much about how this process affects our perception and attention.
Visual Attention
We conduct experiments investigating the underlying mechanisms of the unconscious learning of regularities in the visual environment. Through behavioural research, we investigate the extent to which the learning of statistical regularities in the environment affects perception and patterns of attention. We also investigate how flexible this type of learning is, how environmental context influences learning and whether this type of learning is always fully unconscious.
The Brain
Through brain research, we also endeavour to determine which brain structures are involved in this type of learning, how this is represented at neural level, and how the learned irregularities affect attentional selection processes. We investigate why some people quickly learn and adaptively use this implicit knowledge, while others are slower at learning these regularities and find it more difficult to automatically apply this knowledge.