6533b82bfe1ef96bd128d507

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Why Untrained Control Groups Provide Invalid Baselines: A Reply to Dienes and Altmann

subject

description

Dienes and Altmann argue that an untrained control group provides a reliable baseline to measure artificial grammar learning. In this reply, we first provide a fictitious example to demonstrate that this assessment is faulty. We then analyse why this assessment is wrong, and we reiterate the solution proposed in Reber and Perruchet (this issue) for a proper control. Finally, we point out the importance of these methodological principles in the context of implicit learning studies. In their comment, Dienes and Altmann (this issue) raise two main concerns. First, they argue that any difference in classification between an experimental group and an untrained control group reflects the fact that experimental subjects have acquired content more positively correlated with the experimenter’s grammar than when they started learning. Hence, by definition, this difference provides a reliable measure of learning. In our reply, we show that this intuitively appealing argument is misguided. Second, they propose to measure biases by using regression analyses instead of controlling them, as we proposed in our article. We will present some caveats against using the regression analysis and justify the solution presented in our article.