Non-conscious knowledge of complex regularities supports instrumental conditioning: A registered report

Instrumental conditioning (IC) consists in actively learning to approach rewarding stimuli and to avoid punishing stimuli. This central process for adaptation requires a relatively high computational capacity because it entails the integration of knowledge regarding stimuli, behaviours, and outcomes. Recent studies using subliminal exposure show that IC occurs only for consciously perceived stimuli, suggesting that IC may require awareness. In the present study, we investigated whether IC could occur when implicit processing is stimulated not by subliminal exposure but by employing predictive regularities that are complex and difficult to detect consciously. In a novel IC task based on the artificial grammar learning task, participants gave approach (Go) or avoidance responses (No-Go) to strings from two grammars. Unbeknown to them, one of the grammars was reward-predictive and the other was punishment-predictive. Trial-by-trial measures assessed participants’ awareness of the grammar structures and of their judgments regarding the predictive value of the strings. In both an IC phase and a delayed responding phase, we found that participants responded adaptively when they were aware of the regularities and, also, when they were not. Importantly, we found reliable evidence that non-conscious regularities produced adaptive responding only when they produced conscious judgments regarding the predictive values of the stimuli. When judgment knowledge was unconscious, data were insensitive or more consistent with chance performance. This suggests that IC may be produced by a combination of unconscious learning and conscious integration.