Applying the implicit-explicit distinction to development in children

Abstract

This commentary focuses on how Dienes & Perner's (D&P's) claims relate to aspects of development. First, I discuss recent research that supports D&P's claim that anticipatory looking in a false belief task is guided by implicit knowledge. Second, I argue that implicit knowledge may be based on exposure to regularities in the world as D&P argue, but equally, it may sometimes be based on theories that conflict with real world regularities. Third, I discuss Munakata et al.'s notion of graded representations as an alternative to the implicit-explicit distinction in explaining dissociations in infancy.