WHO says you have to pay attention to learn? Takeo Watanabe and his
colleagues at Boston University asked volunteers to name certain letters
presented on a screen. Dots danced randomly behind the letters—or so it
appeared. In fact, there was a slight bias in the direction they moved.
The volunteers were later asked to watch moving dots and identify underlying
patterns. It turned out that those who had seen a particular direction of dot
movement during training, albeit unconsciously, were significantly better at
spotting the patterns later (Nature, vol 413, p 844).
