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Knowing without doing

Nature Neuroscience volume 10, pages 15–17 (2007)Cite this article

Is it possible to know what to do without being able to act upon this knowledge? In a recent study, Atallah et al. show clear evidence that learning a new skill and expressing it are two separate steps that can be dissociated.

Imagine going on a vacation in a country where cars are driven on the other side of the road. To get into the driver's seat, your initial tendency will be to approach the car from the wrong side. With practice, you will progressively improve and soon approach the correct side of the car consistently. In terms of learning theory, it will take a number of attempts, or trials, before a correct stimulus-response habit is successfully established. Reinforcement learning is a theoretical framework that attempts to describe how such incremental learning happens, with the basic idea that the correct response (approaching the car from the correct side) gets reinforced through the reward (positive outcome of the approach) that follows it.

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Figure 1: Anatomical structures and logical relationships behind 'knowing without doing'.

Kimberly Caesar

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Health and Human Services, Laboratory of Neuropsychology, Building 49, Room 1B80, US National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, 20892, Maryland, USA

    Alexander Lerchner, Giancarlo La Camera & Barry Richmond

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  1. Alexander Lerchner
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  2. Giancarlo La Camera
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  3. Barry Richmond
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Lerchner, A., La Camera, G. & Richmond, B. Knowing without doing. Nat Neurosci 10, 15–17 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn0107-15

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