Condicionamiento con estímulos enmascaradosDesarrollo de Efectos de Priming como Evidencia de Aprendizaje Asociativo no Consciente

Resumo

Arguments on the traditional discussion about the role of conscious cognitive processes in human classical conditioning are revisited in the light of the evidence of unconscious learning results recently obtained in the implicit learning area, focusing on the shortcomings of the experimental results that support the �necessity-gate hypothesis� (Dawson & Furedy, 1976) and drawing up two different explanations for unconscious learning effects. An experimental study on Semantic Conditioning, using backward masking of the conditioned stimulus (CS), the unconditioned stimulus (UCS) or both, shows clear acquisition effects of the CS/UCS association when only one of the stimuli can be consciously processed, and when an indirect measure of automatic priming between the CS and the UCS is used as the index of learning. Results are discussed in terms of the roles that attention and non-conscious processing can play in the development of long-term associations