<A>SAMPLE ANSWER
<C>Question 2. “Implicit learning is very different from explicit learning.” Discuss.
Implicit learning and explicit learning are very different types of learning. Implicit learning is learning that occurs without conscious awareness of what has been learned. On the other hand, explicit learning does involve conscious awareness of what has been learned. Reber (1993) came up with five dimensions by which implicit and explicit learning can be delineated: robustness, age independence, IQ independence, variability, and commonality of process. He maintained that implicit learning systems are less affected by disorders such as amnesia (robustness), or by age, developmental level, or general intelligence (age and IQ dependence). He also maintained that there are smaller individual differences in implicit learning processes (variability) and that implicit systems are common to most species (commonality).
All of these differences would suggest that the two types of learning take place in different areas of the brain. Research with brain-damaged patients and healthy controls supports this distinction between implicit and explicit learning. Destrebecqz et al. (2005), Foerde and Poldrack (2009), and Orban et al. (2010) found that part of the basal ganglia—specifically the striatum—are involved in implicit learning but not explicit learning. Brown et al. (2003) and Wilkinson and Jahanshahi (2007) also found that Parkinson’s patients with damage to the basal ganglia had impaired implicit learning. Other research has shown that the hippocampus and the medial temporal lobes are important for explicit learning but not implicit learning (Aggleton, 2008). Patients with amnesia often have damage to these regions, and they have been shown to have impaired performance on tests of explicit learning (Meulemans & Van der Linden, 2003; Vandenberghe et al., 2006). Brain-imaging studies with healthy controls show that conscious awareness of learning is associated with activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate (Aizenstein et al., 2004; Dehaene et al., 2006).
Of course, the two types of learning are not completely separable. There are also shared regions common to both implicit and explicit learning (Wilkinson et al., 2009). Furthermore, some theories posit that learning is multifaceted, not binary, and usually involves a combination of both implicit and explicit processes (Sun et al., 2009). Despite all the differences between implicit and explicit learning, the two processes work together in achieving one common goal.