Stroop interference depends also on the level of automaticity of the to-be-interfered process.

The size of the Stroop effect is usually taken as dependent on the level of practice of the more automatized of two competing processes (e.g., reading in the standard Stroop task), possibly modulated in children by the age-dependent ability to inhibit nonrelevant information.

What Mechanisms Underlie Implicit Statistical Learning? Transitional Probabilities Versus Chunks in Language Learning.

In a prior review, Perrruchet and Pacton (2006) noted that the literature on implicit learning and the more recent studies on statistical learning focused on the same phenomena, namely the domain-general learning mechanisms acting in incidental, unsupervised learning situations. However, they also noted that implicit learning and statistical learning research favored different interpretations, focusing on the selection of chunks and the computation of transitional probabilities aimed at discovering chunk boundaries, respectively. This paper examines the state of the debate 12 years later.

Familiar units prevail over statistical cues in word segmentation.

In language acquisition research, the prevailing position is that listeners exploit statistical cues, in particular transitional probabilities between syllables, to discover words of a language. However, other cues are also involved in word discovery. Assessing the weight learners give to these different cues leads to a better understanding of the processes underlying speech segmentation.

Dissociating conscious expectancies from automatic-link formation in an electrodermal conditioning paradigm.

The key point of a paradigm initially proposed by Perruchet (Pavlov J Biol Sci 20:163-170, 1985) to dissociate conscious expectancies from automatic-link formation in classical conditioning settings is the use of a partial reinforcement schedule, in which the unconditioned stimulus (US) follows the conditioned stimulus (CS) only half of the time on average. Given (pseudo) randomization, the whole sequence comprises runs of CS alone and runs of CS-US pairs of various lengths. When the preceding run goes from a long sequence of CS alone to a long sequence of CS-US pairs (via shorter sequences), associative strength should grow up, whereas conscious expectancy should decrease.

Dissociating conscious expectancies from automatic link formation in associative learning: a review on the so-called Perruchet effect.

A long-running debate in the literature on conditioning in humans focuses on the question of whether conditioned responses are the product of automatic link formation processes governed by the standard laws of simple associative learning, or the consequence of participants' inferences about the relationships between the 2 related events, E1 and E2, which would lead E1 to generate a conscious expectancy of E2. A paradigm aimed at dissociating the predictions of the 2 accounts was proposed by Perruchet (1985). In this paradigm, E2 randomly follows E1 only half of the time on average, a probability that is known to participants.