Abstract
Three experiments investigated the influence of the response–stimulus interval (RSI) on implicit and explicit learning of stimulus sequences. Participants responded to numerals presented in predetermined positions with alternating long and short RSIs. Half of the participants were instructed explicitly to learn the position sequence. In the transfer phase of Experiments 1 and 2, changing RSI patterns reduced the expression of incidental and intentional learning of position sequence. In Experiment 3 the position sequence was transformed, except that sub-sequences demarcated by long RSIs remained unchanged; this greatly reduced the expression of intentional learning, and slightly reduced that of incidental learning. These results indicate that in implicit learning, stimulus sequences are learned under the constraints of RSIs, whereas in explicit learning, learning independent of RSIs, as well as learning constrained by RSIs, occurs.
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Notes
In the incidental group, the data of the participants who first performed the test under the original RSI pattern (group a in Fig. 3) might be unreliable, because the differences in RTs between the repeating block (Block 9) and the random block (Block 10) did not differ from the difference between the two repeating blocks (Blocks 5 and 6) in the learning stage. Therefore, the indices were recalculated after excluding the data of group a in the incidental and the intentional groups. The results provided almost same findings as those for the whole group. The index of damage was 63.0 ± 116.9 for the incidental group, and 90.7 ± 102.2 for the intentional group. The indices were 48.5 ± 96.6 ms under the original RSI pattern and 22.8 ± 53.8 ms under the changed RSI pattern for the incidental group, and 232.5 ± 145.5 ms and 87.9 ± 107.2 ms for the intentional group. A 2 × 3 ANOVA with factors of group and index type revealed that the main effects of group and of index type, as well as the interaction, were significant, F(1, 22) = 8.12, MSe = 1, 88, 73.18, p < .01; F(2, 44) = 6.03, MSe = 78, 10.64, p < .01; F(2, 44) = 5.11, MSe = 78, 10.64, p < .05. The results of subsequent tests were the same as those for the whole group, except that the expressed learning for the changed RSI pattern did not differ significantly between the groups.
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Acknowledgments
I express my appreciation of Takehko Nishimoto, Shizuo Hayashi, Kazuyoshi Fukuzawa, and Masahiko Tomita. I also acknowledge the critiques of the reviewers.
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Miyawaki, K. The influence of the response–stimulus interval on implicit and explicit learning of stimulus sequence. Psychological Research 70, 262–272 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-005-0216-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-005-0216-y