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This is Dowiggins' talk page. I am working on editing latent learning

Latent learning is a form of learning that is not immediately expressed in an overt response; it occurs without obvious reinforcement to be applied later.

Latent learning is when an organism learns a new concept in its life, however, the knowledge is not immediately expressed. Instead, it remains dormant, and may not be available to consciousness, until specific events/experiences might need this knowledge to be demonstrated. For instance a child may observe a parent setting the table or tightening a screw, but does not act on this learning for a year; then he finds out later on that he knows how to do these.

Early Experiments
In a classical experiment, Tolman and C.H. Honzik (1930) placed three groups of rats in mazes and observed their behavior each day for more than two weeks. The rats in Group 1 always found food at the end of the maze; the rats in Group 2 never found food; and the rats in Group 3 found no food for 10 days, but then received food on the eleventh. The Group 1 rats quickly learned to rush to the end of the maze to find their food; Group 2 rats did not learn to go to the end; Group 3 acted as the Group 2 rats until food was introduced on Day 11. Then they quickly learned to run to the end of the maze and did as well as the Group 1 rats by the next day. If an elevated cue is added to the maze to help draw attention to details the rat will later need in learning the task, the "insight" or latent learning is facilitated. Latent learning can happen in shorter amounts of time such as in three or seven day groups. Similarly, Karn and Porter (1946), found that animals who were exposed to a maze and given goal orientation without reinforcement learned how to find food after it was introduced far quicker than groups which were not preexposed and given goal orientation. In certain complex tasks, the inability of an animal to understand what was and was not correct might not be aided by latent learning. Additionally, certain reinforcers can be more important to the animal than others, and can counteract latent learning procedures.

Seward (1949)allowed animals to have thirty minutes in which to explore a T maze, where no food was present, with arms distinguished by color (black or white). In this case, there was no incentive at all for the rats to reach the goal arms, and they were not removed upon reaching them. The experimenters then placed food on one of the two arms. Rats who were allowed to explore the maze previously were able to make associations between the color of the goal arm and the reward much faster than rats who were not allowed to explore the maze.

Bendig (1952) examined latent learning through use of a water maze. Rats were required to escape a water maze while satiated for food, with food located on one of the escape platforms. Upon being returned to the maze while food deprived, the rats learned where the food was located at a greater rate depending upon how many times they were preexposed to the maze in the training phase, demonstrating varying levels of latent learning.

Stevenson (1954) argued that studies on latent learning in white rats had been extensive, but that the principal should be explored in humans; specifically in children. In his study, Stevenson required children to explore a series of objects to find a key, and then he determined the knowledge the children had about the non-key objects in the set-up. Latent learning was found in children, and there ability to learn in such a method increased as they became older.

Wirsig and Grill (1982) used the taste of sodium chloride to explore which parts of the brain are necessary for the latent learning function in rats. Decorticate rats were just as able as normal rats to accomplish the latent learning task.

Modern Experiments
In recent years, research has further delved into what is necessary for latent learning and what areas it covers. The prion protein was found to be necessary to latent learning in the water maze latent learning task, while phencyclidine was found to impair latent learning in mice on a water finding task. Latent learning can apply to spacial preferences. Rats who were pretrained to prefer a specific corner of a square space learned to choose that corner in other spatial arrangements faster than those without the pretraining.

Campanella and Rovee-Collier (2005) explored how latent learning is present in infants. 3-month olds were simultaneously exposed to two different hand puppets in order to form an association between the two. The infants were periodically presented with one of the puppets until they reached 6-months of age, at which point a target behavior was demonstrated on the first puppet. The infants were presented with the alternate puppet and performed the target behavior on that puppet at a higher rate than the control group who had not seen the two puppets paired.

Latent learning can have limits. Human participants undeprived of caffeine and introduced to a novel drink on 4 subsequent days were given the drink again on a caffeine-deprived fifth day. These participants did not show an increased liking for the flavor upon being caffeine-deprived, while subjects who deprived every day showed an increased liking for the flavor each day. In this case, flavor quality as a function of caffeine is not something which latent processes effect.

Humans with amnesia which has onset from damage to the medial temporal lobe struggle with latent learning which requires representational processes. The latent learning task which required representational processes could not be performed by particpants with medial temporal amnesia.