Why untrained control groups provide invalid baselines: A reply to Dienes and Altmann

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 for a proper control. Finally, we point out the importance of these methodological principles in the context of implicit learning studies.