Can different levels of S-R practice influence sequence learning? An investigation into the context of a perceptual-motor sequence learning task

The main aim of the present study was to evaluate on a serial reaction time task the effect of stimulus-response (S-R) practice on sequence learning. The experiment used a pointing task which allowed recording reaction times and movement times. The basic manipulation consisted in varying the amount of S-R practice prior to sequence practice. Two main findings from this study may be highlighted. Firstly, the benefit from extensive S-R practice was mainly observed in the random practice phase. Secondly, S-R learning and sequence learning were reflected by different components of performance. The movement times were selectively sensitive to the acquisition of S-R regularities whereas the reaction times were selectively sensitive to the acquisition of sequence regularities. The implications of these results on the comprehension of the sequence learning mechanism were then discussed.     

The variability of practice hypothesis in motor learning: does it apply to Alzheimer's disease?

Based on Schmidt's (1975) variability of practice hypothesis, this study examined acquisition and transfer of a gross motor skill, namely tossing, in 58 patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and 58 healthy older adults under constant, blocked, and random practice conditions. While healthy older adults were able to learn the tossing task equally well under the three practice conditions, only AD patients receiving constant practice showed significant improvements. Tests of intermediate transfer yielded the expected random practice advantage in healthy controls but not AD patients. None of the practice conditions facilitated intermediate transfer in AD patients; however, constant practice did benefit these impaired individuals on tests of near transfer. These results indicate that the variability of practice hypothesis does not extend to AD patients. As motor learning and transfer were clearly a function of constant practice, future attempts to retrain basic activities of daily living in AD patients should emphasize consistency in training.     

Effects of a secondary task on "implicit" sequence learning: learning or performance?

Traditionally, implicit learning has been defined in terms of a lack of awareness of the process and products of learning. In the face of a number of conceptual and empirical difficulties with this definition, it has recently been suggested instead that the critical feature of implicit learning is that it proceeds without making any demands on attentional resources. As disconfirmatory evidence for this, we describe the results of two experiments which each used a sequential reaction time task. With a tone-counting secondary task, measures of sequence learning were significantly affected by whether training occurred under single- or dual-task conditions, regardless of whether testing took place under single- or dual-task conditions.     

But what does it mean in practice? The Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology from a practitioner perspective

The author offers some personal reflections on the relevance of the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology (JOOP) to human resource (HR) practitioners. Suggestions are made for how JOOP articles could be more relevant, and how their relevance could be made more explicit. These include (i) framing the research questions/hypotheses in terms that appeal to practitioner concerns as well as theoretical issues, (ii) more analysis of practical implications in the discussion section, (iii) more use of target articles with commentaries rather than special issues/sections, (iv) redirection of articles that focus primarily on method or instrument development to other journals and (v) making use of the World Wide Web. The arguments are illustrated with reference to papers recently published in JOOP.     

The simultaneous learning effect: why does simultaneous task learning improve retention?

Despite the prevalence of encoding variables that have been shown to influence the rate of learning, very few affect the rate of forgetting of verbal material. However, when a list of words is learned simultaneously with other lists, the rate of forgetting is markedly lower than that of single-task learning. Although the magnitude of this simultaneous learning effect is large compared with typical list learning effects, it has received little empirical attention. Experiments 1 and 2 tested the hypothesis that the simultaneous learning effect is the result of a differential contribution of short-term memory during encoding. The results showed that the advantage for simultaneous task learning was obtained even under conditions that minimized the potential effects of short-term memory. Experiment 3 revealed that the simultaneous learning effect was larger when the specific items learned simultaneously were the same on each learning trial than when they were different. This finding supported a cuing explanation of the effect: the items from the other lists act as retrieval cues during delayed recall.     

The semantic interference effect in the picture-word interference paradigm: does the response set matter?

In three picture-word interference experiments we explore some properties of the semantic interference (SI) effect in the picture-word interference paradigm. In Experiments 1 and 2, we test whether SI may be obtained when the distractor words are not part of the response set and when only one picture per semantic category is included in the experiment. In Experiment 3, we explore if the magnitude of the SI effect depends on whether or not the distractor words are part of the response set. Reliable SI effects were obtained in all three experiments and the magnitude of the effect did not vary as a function of whether or not distractor words are part of the response set. These results are problematic for the selection mechanism in the WEAVER++ lexical access model (Levelt, W. J. M., Roelofs, A., & Meyer, A. S. (1999). A theory of lexical access in speech production. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 22, 1-75; Roelofs, A. (1992). A spreading-activation theory of lemma retrieval in speaking. Cognition, 42, 107-142).     

Does motor interference arise from mirror system activation? The effect of prior visuo-motor practice on automatic imitation

Action perception may involve a mirror-matching system, such that observed actions are mapped onto the observer’s own motor representations. The strength of such mirror system activation should depend on an individual’s experience with the observed action. The motor interference effect, where an observed action interferes with a concurrently executed incongruent action, is thought to arise from mirror system activation. However, this view was recently challenged. If motor interference arises from mirror system activation, this effect should be sensitive to prior sensorimotor experience with the observed action. To test this prediction, we measured motor interference in two groups of participants observing the same incongruent movements. One group had received brief visuo-motor practice with the observed incongruent action, but not the other group. Action observation induced a larger motor interference in participants who had practiced the observed action. This result thus supports a mirror system account of motor interference.     

How does practice reduce dual-task interference: Integration, automatization, or just stage-shortening?

The present study assessed three hypotheses of how practice reduces dual-task interference: Practice teaches participants to efficiently integrate performance of a task pair; practice promotes automatization of individual tasks, allowing the central bottleneck to be bypassed; practice leaves the bottleneck intact but shorter in duration. These hypotheses were tested in two transfer-of-training experiments. Participants received one of three training types (Task 1 only, or Task 2 only, or dual-task), followed by dual-task test sessions. Practice effects in Experiment 1 (Task 1: auditory-vocal; Task 2: visual-manual) were fully explained by the intact bottleneck hypothesis, without task integration or automatization. This hypothesis also accounted well for the majority of participants when the task order was reversed (Experiment 2). In this case, however, there were multiple indicators that several participants had succeeded in eliminating the bottleneck by automatizing one or both tasks. Neither experiment provided any evidence that practice promotes efficient task integration.     

The Rorschach: does it have a future?

Recent evidence suggests that in spite of an increasingly critical attitude by many clinicians towards the use of projective techniques, the use of these techniques has not faltered over the years. Insofar as the Rorschach continues to be the most popular projective instrument, its scientific status is critically examined in the present paper. The problems inherent in examining an instrument which has engendered a number of quite distinct scoring systems are noted, and the conclusion is advanced that notwithstanding such problems there seems little likelihood that the Rorschach will experience any significantly diminished popularity in the future.     

Learning complex sequences: no role for observation?

Two experiments examined performance in a sequence learning task. Participants were trained on a repeating sequence which was presented as a visual display and learning was measured via the increase in reaction time to respond to a new sequence. Some participants made a response to each stimulus while others merely observed the sequence. In Experiment 1 participants responding to the display via a keypress showed learning, but those merely observing did not. Five possible reasons for the failure to find observational learning were considered and the Experiment 2 attempted to resolve these. This second experiment confirmed the findings of Experiment 1 in a non-spatial sequence display using a cover story which encouraged attention to the display but not rule-search strategies. The results are discussed in relation to applied and theoretical aspects of implicit learning. Received: 20 December 1999 / Accepted: 16 March 2000     

What causes specificity of practice in a manual aiming movement: vision dominance or transformation errors?

The withdrawal of vision of the arm during a manual aiming task has been found to result in a large increase in aiming error, regardless of the amount of practice in normal vision before its withdrawal. In the present study, the authors investigated whether the increase in error reflects the domination of visual afferent information over the movement representation developed during practice to the detriment of other sources of afferent information or whether it reflects only transformation errors of the location of the target from an allocentric to an egocentric frame of reference. Participants (N = 40) performed aiming movements with their dominant or nondominant arm in a full-vision or target- only condition. The results of the present experiment supported both of those hypotheses. The data indicated that practice does not eliminate the need for visual information for optimizing movement accuracy and that learning is specific to the source or sources of afferent information more likely to ensure optimal accuracy during practice. In addition, the results indicated that movement planning in an allocentric frame of reference might require simultaneous vision of the arm and the target. Finally, practice in a target-only condition, with knowledge of results, was found to improve recoding of the target in an egocentric frame of reference.     

The origin of conditional logic: does a cheater detection module exist?

The domain-specific hypothesis of L. Cosmides (1989) and L. Cosmides and J. Tooby (1989, 1992) positing that conditional logic has its origin in the evolution of social exchange and in the detection of potential cheaters was tested against a more domain-general hypothesis positing that adult reasoning is logical and that errors in conditional reasoning arise from misunderstandings, not from a lack of logicality. The results of 5 experiments with undergraduate students (n = 682 for Experiments 1-4; n = 188 for Experiment 5), which involved a series of selection tasks that yielded specific predictions about participant performance, were not consistent with the cheater detection hypothesis. Findings supported the misunderstandings hypothesis and imply that adults possess general-purpose logical competence versus domain-specific modules.     

How does the severity of a learning disability affect working memory performance?

Working memory performance was examined in children aged 11-12 years who had borderline, mild, and moderate learning disabilities. Comparisons with children of average abilities were used to determine whether those with more severe learning disabilities had greater impairments in working memory. Seven measures of working memory span were used to assess temporary phonological short-term storage (digit span, word span), temporary visuo-spatial short-term storage (pattern span, spatial span), and temporary short-term storage with additional processing, or central executive, demands (listening span, odd one out span, reverse digit span). Children with mild and moderate learning disabilities were impaired on all measures of working memory compared to children of average abilities. Children with borderline learning disabilities were just as good as children with average abilities on visuo-spatial and complex span tasks, but showed an impairment on phonological span tasks. Children with moderate learning disabilities were indistinguishable from children with mild learning disabilities on simple span tasks, but were significantly poorer than the mild group on the more demanding complex span tasks. For the group as a whole, working memory was strongly related to mental age.     

How does the severity of a learning disability affect working memory performance?

Working memory performance was examined in children aged 11-12 years who had borderline, mild, and moderate learning disabilities. Comparisons with children of average abilities were used to determine whether those with more severe learning disabilities had greater impairments in working memory. Seven measures of working memory span were used to assess temporary phonological short-term storage (digit span, word span), temporary visuo-spatial short-term storage (pattern span, spatial span), and temporary short-term storage with additional processing, or central executive, demands (listening span. odd one out span, reverse digit span). Children with mild and moderate learning disabilities were impaired on all measures of working memory compared to children of average abilities. Children with borderline learning disabilities were just as good as children with average abilities on visuo-spatial and complex span tasks, but showed an impairment on phonological span tasks. Children with moderate learning disabilities were indistinguishable from children with mild learning disabilities on simple span tasks, but were significantly poorer than the mild group on the more demanding complex span tasks. For the group as a whole, working memory was strongly related to mental age.     

Effect of sequence length on the execution of familiar keying sequences: lasting segmentation and preparation?

The author assessed the mechanisms underlying skilled production of keying sequences in the discrete sequence-production task by examining the effect of sequence length on mean element execution rate (i.e., the rate effect). To that end, participants (N = 9) practiced fixed movement sequences consisting of 2, 4, and 6 key presses for a total of 588 trials per sequence. In the subsequent test phase, the sequences were executed with and without a verbal short-term memory task in both simple and choice reaction time (RT) paradigms. The rate effect was obtained in the discrete sequence-production task-including the typical quadratic increase in sequence execution time (SET, which excludes RT) with sequence length. The rate effect resulted primarily from 6-key sequences that included 1 or 2 relatively slow elements at individually different serial positions. Slowing of the depression of the 2nd response key (R2) in the 2-key sequence reduced the rate effect in the memory task condition, and faster execution of the 1st few elements in each sequence amplified the rate effect in simple RT. Last, the time to respond to random cues increased with position, suggesting that the mechanisms that underlie the rate effect in new sequences and in familiar sequences are different. The data were in line with the notion that coding of longer keying sequences involves motor chunks for the individual sequence segments and information on how those motor chunks are to be concatenated.     

Collaboration and psychological ownership: how does the tension between the two influence perceived learning?

Collaborative writing may evoke conflict between individuals’ feeling of contribution and their sense of ownership toward the collective outcomes. The present study tested the relations between perceived psychological ownership, perceived quality of the product, and perceived learning in five experimental conditions: two collaborative, two sharing, and a control. Analysis of the changes made between versions revealed differences in quantity and in types of changes between collaboration, sharing, and control conditions. Results showed that collaboration may improve the perceived quality of the written product more than sharing or control. In addition, less intrusive collaboration seems to enhance the sense of perceived learning. The relation between perceived ownership and perceived learning was mediated by perceived quality of the written product. We conclude that students may avoid collaboration partly because they do not want to lose a sense of personal ownership or to lessen peer ownership.     

The professionalism movement: can we pause?

The topic of developing professionalism dominated the content of many academic medicine publications and conference agendas during the past decade. Calls to address the development of professionalism among medical students and residents have come from professional societies, accrediting agencies, and a host of educators in the biomedical sciences. The language of the professionalism movement is now a given among those in academic medicine. We raise serious concerns about the professionalism discourse and how the specialized language of academic medicine disciplines has defined, organized, contained, and made seemingly immutable a group of attitudes, values, and behaviors subsumed under the label of "professionalism." In particular, we argue that the professionalism discourse needs to pay more attention to the academic environment in which students are educated, that it should articulate specific positive behaviors, that the theory of professionalism must be constructed from a dialogue with those we are educating, and that this theoretical and practical discourse must aim at a deeper understanding of social justice and the role of medicine within a just society.     

Errorful and errorless learning: The impact of cue–target constraint in learning from errors

The benefits of testing on learning are well described, and attention has recently turned to what happens when errors are elicited during learning: Is testing nonetheless beneficial, or can errors hinder learning? Whilst recent findings have indicated that tests boost learning even if errors are made on every trial, other reports, emphasizing the benefits of errorless learning, have indicated that errors lead to poorer later memory performance. The possibility that this discrepancy is a function of the materials that must be learned—in particular, the relationship between the cues and targets—was addressed here. Cued recall after either a study-only errorless condition or an errorful learning condition was contrasted across cue–target associations, for which the extent to which the target was constrained by the cue was either high or low. Experiment 1 showed that whereas errorful learning led to greater recall for low-constraint stimuli, it led to a significant decrease in recall for high-constraint stimuli. This interaction is thought to reflect the extent to which retrieval is constrained by the cue–target association, as well as by the presence of preexisting semantic associations. The advantage of errorful retrieval for low-constraint stimuli was replicated in Experiment 2, and the interaction with stimulus type was replicated in Experiment 3, even when guesses were randomly designated as being either correct or incorrect. This pattern provides support for inferences derived from reports in which participants made errors on all learning trials, whilst highlighting the impact of material characteristics on the benefits and disadvantages that accrue from errorful learning in episodic memory.     

Processing abstract sequence structure: learning without knowing, or knowing without learning?

Constant interaction with a dynamic environment—from riding a bicycle to segmenting speech—makes sensitivity to the sequential structure of the world a fundamental dimension of information processing. Accounts of sequence learning vary widely, with some authors arguing that parsing and segmentation processes are central, and others proposing that sequence learning involves mere memorization. In this paper, we argue that sequence knowledge is essentially statistical in nature, and that sequence learning involves simple associative prediction mechanisms. We focus on a choice reaction situation introduced by Lee (1997), in which participants were exposed to material that follows a single abstract rule, namely that stimuli are selected randomly, but never appear more than once in a legal sequence. Perhaps surprisingly, people can learn this rule very well. Or can they? We offer a conceptual replication of the original finding, but a very different interpretation of the results, as well as simulation work that makes it clear how highly abstract dimensions of the stimulus material can in fact be learned based on elementary associative mechanisms. We conclude that, when relevant, memory is optimized to facilitate responding to events that have not occurred recently, and that sequence learning in general always involves sensitivity to repetition distance.