Consciousness and Implicit Learning

This paper considers methodological issues of awareness during adult second language acquisition (SLA). Specifically, the paper deals with (a) the issue of instructional orientations, (b) the issue of biases in knowledge measurement, and (c) the issue of reactivity in the online think-aloud protocol. Detailed reviews of prominent SLA research that has investigated the possibility of implicit SLA reveal (1) that the instruction on implicit learning does not guarantee that learners engage in the implicit learning mode, (2) that the majority of SLA research has employed only tests of “explicit learning” such as untimed grammaticality judgment, and (3) that there is some evidence that the online think-aloud protocol causes negative reactivity particularly when it is metalinguistic in nature.

Methodological problems of how awareness during learning should be measured have been extensively discussed and investigated in cognitive psychology. This review considers; 1) whether amnesics can perform implicit learning tasks at a similar level to normal controls, 2) whether differences in instructional orientations create dissociations in performance in tests of implicit and explicit Knowledge, and 3) whether participants can retrospectively verbalise the learning outcomes. The paper concludes that; (1) amnesics’ implicit learning abilities differ from the normal controls, (2) instructions on implicit learning do not guarantee the occurrence of implicit learning, and (3) objective and subjective awareness measures used in the literature face inherent problems and so the awareness controversy remains unsettled.