Unconscious structural knowledge of tonal symmetry: Tang poetry redefines limits of implicit learning

• Published in: Consciousness and cognition Vol. 21; no. 1; pp. 476 - 486
• Main Authors: Jiang, Shan, Zhu, Lei, Guo, Xiuyan, Ma, Wendy, Yang, Zhiliang, Dienes, Zoltan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier Inc 01-03-2012; Elsevier; Elsevier BV
• Subjects: Adult; Biological and medical sciences; China; Cognition & reasoning; Consciousness; Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Human; Humans; Implicit learning; Learning; Learning. Memory; Male; Pattern Recognition, Physiological; Poetry; Poetry as Topic; Psycholinguistics; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Speech Acoustics; Structural knowledge; Symmetry; Tang poetry; Tonal language; China; Structural knowledge; Implicit learning; Tonal language; Tang poetry; Symmetry; Human; Cognition; Experimental study; Knowledge; Acquisition process; Language; Chinese; Consciousness unconsciousness; Poetry
• ISSN: 1053-8100; 1090-2376
• DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2011.12.009

► People can acquire unconscious structural knowledge of a binary inversion in Tang poetry. ► People can implicitly learn to discriminate inversions from non-inversions. ► Both n-gram structure and repetition patterns are controlled.
The study aims to help characterize the sort of structures about which people can acquire unconscious knowledge. It is already well established that people can implicitly learn n-grams (chunks) and also repetition patterns. We explore the acquisition of unconscious structural knowledge of symmetry. Chinese Tang poetry uses a specific sort of mirror symmetry, an inversion rule with respect to the tones of characters in successive lines of verse. We show, using artificial poetry to control both n-gram structure and repetition patterns, that people can implicitly learn to discriminate inversions from non-inversions, presenting a challenge to existing models of implicit learning.