Tricking our brains to learn and remember; is all learning incidental?

Abstract

Do we choose what we learn? On the contrary, research suggests that much of learning is incidental. The present article reviews frameworks of incidental statistical and perceptual learning and discusses implications of these frameworks to memory. This research supports the premise that much of what we know is shaped by statistical regularities in the environment, how our attention is directed, and what reinforcement we receive from successes and failures. This incidental learning shapes what we perceive and what we remember. This idea that we don’t control when and what we learn, instead we at best trick our brain into states that will lead to desired learning outcomes, has important implications both to individuals and society.