Mm. So, implicit learning is a scientific term, that should be contrasted with semantic or declarative learning rather than "explicit" or "~~intentional~~" lear

Mm. So, implicit learning is a scientific term, that should be contrasted with semantic or declarative learning rather than "explicit" or "~~intentional~~" learning. Implicit learning trains implicit or procedural memory, whereas semantic learning trains semantic memory. Semantic memory is your memory of places, things, facts, etc.. Procedural, or implicit, memory is of things like "how to ride a bike" or "how to identify a chess tactic". Your implicit memory, and your ability to implicitly learn, is related to all sorts of things, like creativity, fluid intelligence, intuition, all of your background processes. I'm not sure how you can operationally define something as nebulous as "mindfulness" (I've seen a reference to the metric they use in another comment, so apparently operationalizations do exist), but if it does reduce implicit learning, it is indeed bad. Virtually all learning should eventually end up being implicit. Implicit learning is venerable hacker feeling out a bug in some code and massaging in a solution. Implicit learning is what makes it possible for chess grandmasters to instantly identify board configurations and memorize arbitrary board layouts instantly -- as long as the layout is legal. Experts can do these things because they have automatized their disciplines, because over time their repeated, implicit practice has caused their pattern-matching brains to encode vast amounts of information over years of lessons.