title: Associative learning with and without perceptual awareness.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The relationship between awareness and associative learning is a key controversial issue that remains to be elucidated. An experiment was designed to assess associative learning with and without perceptual awareness.
  
  
  METHODS
  Participants received repeated trials of two compatible stimuli sequences (S1A → S2A and S1B → S2B ), where S1 was a masked stimulus, and S2 an imperative stimulus for a reaction time (RT) task. After the acquisition phase, some probe trials of incompatible stimuli sequences (S1A → S2B and S1B → S2A ) were inserted among the compatible sequence trials during two testing sessions. Subsequently, subjects were classified as perceptually aware or perceptually unaware by means of a forced-choice identification task that was administered at the beginning and end of the experiment.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The results showed perceptually unaware participants responded faster to compatible than to incompatible stimuli sequences. However, no priming effect was observed in aware participants.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These results are discussed in terms of an S-R associative mechanism and provide strong evidence of unconscious associative learning.
authors.affiliation: Universidad de A Coruña.
authors.forename: José Luis
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Marcos Malmierca
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001245:Association Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D001364:Awareness / Q000502:physiology*; D016010:Binomial Distribution; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010470:Perceptual Masking / Q000502:physiology; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D055815:Young Adult