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Long-term retention of a motor skill: Implicit sequence knowledge is not retained after a one-year delay

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Abstract

Experimental work shows that some motor skills are retained well over a long delay and others are not. It is possible that motor tasks that are primarily implicit are retained over long intervals, whereas those with an explicit component are subject to more rapid forgetting. To test whether implicit motor skills are retained, 24 (experienced) participants were retested after a one-year delay for their retention of an implicit motor sequence. They had been trained on the sequence in a button-pushing task. Although the experienced participants responded faster than they had a year earlier, they showed no retention of the sequence compared to 24 participants who had received no training a year earlier, and no savings in relearning the sequence. The overall speed effect may indicate that the amount of training is crucial to the degree of retention of a skill. The results indicate that it is not the case that implicit motor skills are well retained whereas those with an explicit component are not.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, 102 Gilmer Hall, 22903, Charlottesvill, VA, USA

    Daniel B. Willingham

  2. Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

    Julei A. Dumas

Authors
  1. Daniel B. Willingham
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  2. Julei A. Dumas
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Correspondence to Daniel B. Willingham.

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Willingham, D.B., Dumas, J.A. Long-term retention of a motor skill: Implicit sequence knowledge is not retained after a one-year delay. Psychol. Res 60, 113–119 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00419684

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00419684

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