ABSTRACT
Moving to a new home or job can be stressful and tiring because we cannot fall back on routines. But gradually we adjust to the novel physical and social surroundings, getting used to the new rhythms of our days and the layouts of our new spaces, and coming to anticipate the ways in which our new neighbors and colleagues will react. This adaptation involves implicit learning; we are absorbing the structure of our environment without intending to do so and without being aware of exactly what we are learning (Frensch & Ruenger, 2003; Reber, 1993). Such implicit learning contrasts with the more explicit and deliberate way in which we set out to learn the names of the new people we are meeting. Various descriptors have been used to capture the nature of implicit learning. It has been likened to a “structural sponge” (Hoyer & Lincourt, 1998), “learning by osmosis” (Claxton, 2000), the “adaptive unconscious” (Wilson, 2002), and “thinking without thinking” (Gladwell, 2005). Implicit learning is important for many functions, including social intuition (Lieberman, 2000) and language learning (Conway & Pisoni, 2008).
