Cock Josephine, Meier Beat
Department of Psychology, University of Bern, Muesmattstr. 45, 3000, Bern 9, Switzerland.
Psychol Res. 2007 Mar;71(2):140-51. doi: 10.1007/s00426-005-0005-7. Epub 2005 Aug 26.
In four experiments we investigated whether incidental task sequence learning occurs when no instructional task cues are available (i.e. with univalent stimuli). We manipulated task sequence by presenting three simple binary-choice tasks (colour, form or letter case decisions) in regular repeated or random order. Participants were required to use the same two response keys for each of the tasks. We manipulated response sequence by ordering the stimuli so as to produce either a regular or a random order of left versus right-hand key presses. When sequencing in both, or either, separate stream (i.e. task sequence and/or response sequence) was changed to random, only those participants who had processed both sequences together showed evidence of sequence learning in terms of significant response time disruption (Experiments 1-3). This effect disappeared when the sequences were uncorrelated (Experiment 4). The results indicate that only the correlated integration of task sequence and response sequence produced a reliable incidental learning effect. As this effect depends on the predictable ordering of stimulus categories, it suggests that task sequence learning is perceptual rather than conceptual in nature.
在四项实验中，我们研究了在没有指导性任务线索（即使用单值刺激）的情况下，是否会发生附带任务序列学习。我们通过以规则重复或随机顺序呈现三个简单的二选一任务（颜色、形状或字母大小写判断）来操纵任务序列。要求参与者对每个任务都使用相同的两个响应键。我们通过对刺激进行排序来操纵响应序列，以便产生左手或右手按键的规则或随机顺序。当两个单独的序列流（即任务序列和/或响应序列）中的排序变为随机时，只有那些将两个序列一起处理的参与者才表现出序列学习的证据，即显著的反应时间中断（实验1-3）。当序列不相关时，这种效应消失了（实验4）。结果表明，只有任务序列和响应序列的相关整合才产生了可靠的附带学习效应。由于这种效应取决于刺激类别的可预测排序，这表明任务序列学习本质上是感知性的而非概念性的。
