Implicit Learning of Motor and Perceptual Skills

Abstract Humans and other animals exhibit an astonishing capacity to learn motor and perceptual skills through practice and experience. Both can occur without awareness and explicit knowledge of what has been learned. They follow similar learning trajectories and involve offline gains in performance. Work with neuropsychological patients has revealed the importance of interactions between cortex and the basal ganglia in both types. One difference that appears to exist is the capacity for transfer to similar learning situations. While skills are relatively less flexible than conscious knowledge, perceptual skills are particularly specific to the training stimuli. However, both types of skill learning may benefit from contextual interference during training, leading to skills that can transfer more readily. Many of the procedures learned during daily life have components of both motor and perceptual learning. Thus understanding how to facilitate these forms of implicit skill learning can improve training in rehabilitation and educational settings.