Contents - Konrad Lorenz Institute

Vertical and Horizontal Learning
as a system meant to increase the probability of immediate
survival. Organisms responsive to information
that would be potentially harmful or stimulating
would be favoured over organisms with less
well adapted monitoring capabilitites. This simple
fact is crucial to the evolutionary invention of the
learning system (CHURCHLAND 1986; DENNETT
1996). For the implicit learning device to acknowledge
and categorize encounters into harmful and
productive recurrence of events are conditional.
Monitoring seemingly neutral stimuli signaling
the occurrence of either harmful or productive
stimuli (central to almost all sorts of conditioning
processes) increases the survival capacity. If an organism
can anticipate events by monitoring cue
signals, it is one step ahead of reality. Therefore
context matters. In comparison, a learning device
worked out to register information which is seldom
repeated or barely had any consequences
would be outcompeted and therefore not implemented
in the gene pool of the generations to
come. Learning systems focused on environmental
regularities will tend to be sensitive to a broad
range of stimuli, combining and storing different
stimulus modalities to obtain as much information
as possible. Incidently, this explains why implicit
learning is applicable to all our senses. Being receptive
to any event however insignificant, because of
its predicitive powers is to focus on relations and
interconnectivity of variables.
The crux of the matter is as follows: Implicit
learning capabilities emerged to monitor intricate
patterns of information of survival value to the organism.
To register relations and interdependency
of stimuli is to learn about context. Hence, implicitly
learned material retain context and becomes
correspondently committed to specific learning
situations to a greater extent.
Explicit and implicit learning systems interpret
the environment differently as regards detachment
from context. Implicit learning relates to information
as pieces in a jigsaw puzzle relate to the picture
they represent. By using an implicit learning strategy
one might not identify all relationships due to a
number of pieces being missing, but one might still
get a fairly good representation
of the overall picture. On
the contrary, using an explicit
learning strategy corresponds
to choosing a few significant
pieces to get a general idea (by
educated guesses) of the
whole by disregarding a large
Author’s address
Theresa S. S. Schilhab, Learning Lab Denmark,
Danish University of Education, Emdrupvej
101, DK-2400 Copenhagen NV.
Email: theresa@lld.dk
amount of less significant pieces of information. In
the explicit condition if one chooses pieces of sky,
ground and corners the impression applies to a multitude
of pictures. Whereas in the implicit condition
the extra pieces of for example birds, houses and
telephone poles fill in relations to determine this
particular picture.
Horizontal and Vertical Learning
To summarise; implicit learning is adapted to monitor
intricate patterns whereas the benefit of explicit
learning is to abstract material from relations and
contexts, to gather and store particular information
in a universal format that can be applied in a new
context. The independence of actual events makes
the learned material mentally manageable which can
eventually be passed on to other individuals.
For any organism, the first priority is to stay alive.
Hence abilities to divide immense amounts of information
into essential (life preserving) and non essential
(unimportant to life preservation) information
will be aimed at stimuli that show some sort of
repetition and form part of a recognizable pattern,
specific to a learning incident. Disclosing structures
that are vertically oriented becomes essential and
results in the learning not being applicable to different
contexts.
On the other hand, the explicit learning system
was developed on top of the implicit system, not as
an alternative solution to replace implicit learning
devices. Thus, explicit learning, that supplements an
already well functioning implicit learning system, is
adapted to obtain information irrespective of contextual
relations. The explicit learning system can be applied
to a wider range of information processing. For
example, it has no need for stimuli to be constant or
repetitive, in order to operate. In many instances,
one exposure to a particular stimulus is sufficient for
later storage. Because of being widely independent of
context it can also be applied to different contextual
settings which makes it horizontally oriented. Explicit
learning capabilities (especially context independency)
were beyond any doubt fundamental to
the cultural progress of humans as viewed by advanced
tool making (DAVID-
SON/NOBLE 1993; NOBLE/
DAVIDSON 1996). The superiority
of human intelligence, in
particular its versatility, is due
to the sophistication of the explicit
learning device (e.g.;
BENNETT 1988, 1997).
Evolution and Cognition ❘ 175 ❘ 2003, Vol. 9, No. 2