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Implicit sequence learning without motor sequencing in young and old adults

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Abstract

The ability to detect patterns and organize individual events into complex sequences is a fundamental cognitive skill that is often learned implicitly. The serial response time (SRT) task has been widely used to investigate implicit sequence learning, but it remains unclear whether people learn a perceptual or motor sequence in this task. This study reports three experiments that build on previous research by Goschke and colleagues using an auditory SRT task in which the stimulus-to-response mapping changes on every trial to eliminate spatio-motor sequencing. The current study extends earlier work in three ways. First, healthy young and older adults were tested rather than the neuropsychological patients used in previous research. Second, sequences of different structural complexity were investigated including first- and second-order repeating sequences as well as higher-order probabilistic sequences. Third, the potential role of explicit knowledge was examined using three separate tests of declarative knowledge. Results indicate that young and old adults are able to learn purely perceptual auditory sequences, but that explicit knowledge contributes to learning of repeating sequences by young adults.

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Notes

  1. The first six participants in each group received a foil sequence that was completely random. This sequence potentially contained repetitions of a stimulus, an event which never occurred in the training sequence and may have been a salient cue to the categorization of the sequence. Participants #7–12 in each group received a foil consistent with that described in the paper. Their data alone were used in recognition analyses.

  2. One older and one younger participant were excluded from the Production analysis for failure to follow task instructions. During the exclusion block the older adult repeatedly hit the same key, where the younger adult reported that she continued to respond as they were during the inclusion block.

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Acknowledgment

This work was supported by NIA Grant R37 AG15450 and completed in partial fulfillment of the requirements for NAD’s PhD at the Catholic University of America. Partial support was provided by NIA grant T32 AG00029 (NAD). Preliminary results were reported at the 2002 Society for Neuroscience Conference in Orlando, FL and 2003 Cognitive Neuroscience Society Meeting in New York City, NY. We thank Raja Parasuraman and Pam Greenwood for their comments and suggestions on previous versions of this manuscript. We also thank the many RAs who helped with data collection, Kate LaVine, Nicole Bradley, Bridget Lynch, Andrew Kelly, Sean LaVine, and Alisa Padon.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, USA

    Nancy A. Dennis & James H. Howard Jr

  2. Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

    Nancy A. Dennis

  3. Department of Neurology, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA

    James H. Howard Jr

  4. Department of Psychology, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA

    Darlene V. Howard

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  1. Nancy A. Dennis
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  2. James H. Howard Jr
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  3. Darlene V. Howard
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Correspondence to Nancy A. Dennis.

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Dennis, N.A., Howard, J.H. & Howard, D.V. Implicit sequence learning without motor sequencing in young and old adults. Exp Brain Res 175, 153–164 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-006-0534-3

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