Implicit learning out of the lab: The acquisition of language and music

The course offers an introduction to implicit and statistical learning research. The emphasis will be on two cases that are often cited as prime examples of implicit learning "in the real world", namely language and music. We will concentrate on key questions that have been addressed over the past 20 years, including the following: How do we distinguish implicit and explicit knowledge? How is implicit knowledge represented in the mind (rules, chunks, patterns, etc.)? What aspects of language and music can be learned implicitly? Can adult learners acquire a novel language implicitly? How do implicit and explicit knowledge/learning interact? What is the difference between implicit learning and statistical learning? Which insights do computational models provide? The focus will be on research produced within cognitive psychology (especially Artificial Grammar Learning), developmental psychology (especially statistical learning), applied linguistics, music cognition, and computer science. This course is co-taught with Martin Rohrmeier.