Thomas K M, Nelson C A
Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology, Weill Medical College of Cornell University, New York, NY 10021, USA.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2001 Aug;79(4):364-87. doi: 10.1006/jecp.2000.2613.
Visuomotor sequence learning was assessed in 4- to 10-year-old children using a serial reaction time (SRT) task with both random and sequenced trials. One-half of the children received exposure to the sequence prior to performing the reaction time (RT) task. In Experiment 1, 7- and 10-year-old children demonstrated sequence-specific decreases in RT. As in the adult SRT literature, participants with explicit awareness of the sequence at the end of the session showed larger sequence-specific reaction time decrements than those without explicit awareness. Contrary to expectation, preexposure to the sequence did not reliably predict the level of awareness attained. Results from Experiment 2 indicate that 4-year-olds also demonstrate significant sequence learning on a variant of the SRT task. This article provides preliminary data regarding developmental changes in sequential learning and the development and use of implicit and explicit knowledge. Age-related differences emerged primarily in explicit rather than implicit knowledge.
采用具有随机和序列试验的序列反应时（SRT）任务，对4至10岁儿童的视觉运动序列学习进行了评估。一半儿童在执行反应时（RT）任务之前先接触该序列。在实验1中，7岁和10岁儿童的反应时出现了特定序列的下降。与成人SRT文献中的情况一样，在实验结束时明确意识到序列的参与者比没有明确意识的参与者表现出更大的特定序列反应时下降。与预期相反，预先接触该序列并不能可靠地预测所达到的意识水平。实验2的结果表明，4岁儿童在SRT任务的一个变体上也表现出显著的序列学习。本文提供了关于序列学习发展变化以及内隐和外显知识的发展与使用的初步数据。年龄相关差异主要出现在外显知识而非内隐知识中。
