i.e. consciousness. Only in a model where the information is not distinct from the hardware' can there be any room for the implicit'. Cleeremans goes on to advocate connectionist modelling as being the solution to the problems generated by these assumptions. He notes that connectionist models can generate rule-like behaviour (such as that seen in implicit learning tasks) without requiring any discrete representations of rules to be stored in the system. Cleeremans also points out the problems of other assumptions such as dissociations implying modularity or tasks which are process-pure. To ®nish, he leaves the reader to dwell on what might happen if we were to simply call this area `learning'.
In sum, the title is something of a misnomer if we wish to equate implicit' with unconscious'. Many contributors suggest that consciousness is not the key issue at all in the implicit/explicit debate. Others demonstrate that the answer to the question would depend on which type of evidence one is prepared to accept to demarcate conscious from unconscious. There is a clear consensus, however, that an implicit system should have dierent processing characteristics from an explicit system in terms of the underlying representations and the ¯exibility of their use. The extent of these dierences are a point of contention between the various contributors although most seem to agree that learning is not limited to just fragmentary or just abstract representations of the information. It is also worth noting that with the clear exception of Lewicki et al., most of the empirical evidence cited is taken from the arti®cial grammar paradigm and one wonders how much experimental evidence would be replicable within another experimental paradigm. This book is probably not suitable for a general introduction to the area of implicit learning (for those wishing such a text, Berry and Dienes, 1993, gives a balanced and very readable account of the entire area) but will give the researcher or more advanced reader the most up-to-date account of where the ®eld stands at present and also the likely future directions which it will take.