Can You Really Learn Without Conscious Awareness?
Catherine Beehag

Can you learn without any conscious effort? Many psychologists propose that much of the information learned during the normal course of life is indeed learned without us being aware. But Dr. Ben Newell, a lecturer in Psychology at UNSW is out to prove them wrong.

The psychologists who suggest that we learn information implicitly cite complex activities, such as bicycle riding and language learning, as the evidence. The cognitive process behind learning a new word cannot be explained as readily as with other behaviours, like reading.

Despite a burgeoning industry in miracle “super” learning techniques and previous research indicating that implicit learning exists, challenges remain. For example, Dr. Ben Newell, argues that there is as yet no good scientific support for the notion that we can learn without conscious effort or awareness. His research is part of a change in the way that cognition is conceptualised in psychology. “In fact, my supervisor joked that my thesis should have been titled ‘Why my Supervisor’s Experiments were all Wrong’!” Ben said with a grin.

Ben was born in Cardiff, Wales and raised in Devon, England and completed his undergraduate degree at Nottingham University in psychology. Ben has always been surrounded by science with his father a surgeon and his mother a nurse; “I have always been interested in science, it was probably from my parents,” he confessed. He soon realised that the traditional sciences of biology, chemistry and physics were not for him, “I didn’t want to go into the hard sciences – so I chose to do psychology.”

Ben was inspired at high school when he went to a Nottingham University open day and participated in an experiment on implicit learning, “It piqued my interest in the topic and in some ways set me on my future career path. I found the idea that we could learn and remember things without any conscious involvement fascinating,” Ben explained.

After Honours, Ben fulfilled his desire to see more of the world by teaching English in Japan. These years opened his eyes to another culture and way of living. After two years, he applied to do a PhD in Australia under Dr. Jim Bright of UNSW, who had also done research on implicit learning in Nottingham. Fortunately Ben was awarded a Commonwealth scholarship to study at UNSW, which paid tuition fees and provided living expenses for three years.

For his PhD research, Ben allocated different tasks to UNSW students and examined the evidence these tasks revealed about unconscious learning. “By isolating the tasks, I found that only explicit learning was at work,” he said. These results reinforced his previous research conclusions about implicit learning not existing. The idea of having two separate learning systems has many implications in the wider world, from the way schools teach to the manner in which patients with brain damage are taught. For example, if someone has suffered brain damage, we would know that it will not increase their chance of acquiring language skills, as language is thought to have occurred at childhood. Hence language will have to be explicitly taught.

Ben’s visa ran out after the completion of his PhD, and as a result, he returned to the UK and worked for the Centre for Economic Learning and Social Evolution (ELSE). This centre is devoted to the interdisciplinary study of human behaviour, combining economics, psychology and anthropology. It was here that Ben worked for three years with leading researchers in the area of cognition.

He has also contributed to the field of cognition by publishing his results in twenty different publications and has started to write a book on his research interests. Ben’s enthusiasm toward his research has not diminished over the years. Like all scientists, he obtains satisfaction from being able to contribute new findings to the scientific community. Positive feedback from students, conference presentations and the citations made to his work all motivate him to keep researching.

Driven by the desire to uncover the implicit/explicit distinction in learning, memory and knowledge, Ben is presently involved in multiple projects with the aim of explaining how the conscious mind works. Ben explains that “the failure of participants to indicate conscious awareness does not prove that learning is implicit.” He proposes that the reason why many psychologists previously believed in the concept of implicit learning was most likely due to researchers asking participants questions that were “too simple”. This led to participants being unable to verbalise the steps in a learning process or explain why they made a particular decision. From such results, researchers concluded that the learning gained by participants was carried out without conscious awareness.

One of Ben’s other interests is how people make decisions. For example, how exactly do people make decisions in the stock market, where there are multiple pieces of information they can use? This task seems to be done unconsciously, but is it? One of Ben’s recent papers investigates the question of how people make judgements. In one experiment, he gave participants a weather prediction task. Each participant was provided with four cues and had to make a prediction as to whether the weather was going to be sunny or rainy. In previous research, participants would be asked how they had made their decision, but they would be asked only at the end of the experiment. What makes Ben’s research different is that he and colleagues asked participants trial by trial how much they relied on each cue rather than just asking a general question at the end of the experiment. The results showed a convergence between the cues provided and participant responses. Hence, participants were seen to have insight into strategies that they were using to make judgements. “It is because of this convergence between what they say they are doing and what they are actually doing that illustrates to me that there is no room for an implicit effect,” Ben said.

How does Ben handle all of his research projects and responsibilities? “It is tough at times,” he admits, “but I try to keep my weekends as free as possible to spend with my family. I also try to get up early enough a few mornings a week to go for a surf before coming into work.” And down the track? “For the moment, I am happy to continue as an active research academic. I would like to broaden my applied focus at some point and perhaps do some consulting work. But at the moment, I am busy and happy enough!”

Recent research in the area of cognition is continuing to support Dr Newell’s claim that we can only learn explicitly. So throw out your cassettes telling you that you are becoming a genius whilst you sleep and start concentrating!

Interested in Ben’s research? Take a look at his personal website, which provides links to his journal articles:
http://www.psy.unsw.edu.au/Users/BNewell

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