ABSTRACTNESS OF IMPLICIT GRAMMAR KNOWLEDGE - COMMENTS ON PERRUCHET AND PACTEAU ANALYSIS OF SYNTHETIC GRAMMAR LEARNING

On the basis of 3 experiments, Perruchet and Pacteau (1990) argued that implicitly acquired knowledge of a synthetic grammar consists of little more than knowledge of pairwise associations between pairs of letters in the grammar. By comparing their results with a study by Mathews, Buss, Stanley, Blanchard-Fields, Cho, and Druhan (1989), it is argued that (a) implicitly acquired knowledge is much richer and more abstract than suggested by Perruchet and Pacteau, (b) their recognition measures are less sensitive than the Mathews, Buss, et al. recall measures for detecting conscious awareness of implicit knowledge, and (c) fragmentary knowledge of a grammar constitutes abstract rules that enable performance of complex tasks when integrated into a system for combining knowledge across rules.