Jiménez Luis, Méndez Amavia, Pasquali Antoine, Abrahamse Elger, Verwey Willem
University of Santiago, Spain.
Acta Psychol (Amst). 2011 Jul;137(3):318-29. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2011.03.013. Epub 2011 Apr 22.
Chunk learning (the process by which a sequence is learned and retrieved from memory in smaller, decomposed units of information) has been postulated as the main learning mechanism underlying sequence learning (Perruchet & Pacton, 2006). However, the evidence for chunk formation has been elusive in the continuous serial reaction-time task, whereas other continuous, statistical processes of learning account well for the results observed in this task. This article proposes a new index to capture segmentation in learning, based on the variance of responding to different parts of a sequence. We assess the validity of this measure by comparing performance in a control group with that of another group in which color codes were used to induce a uniform segmentation. Results showed that evidence of chunking was obtained when the color codes were consistently coupled to responses, but that chunking was not maintained after the colors were removed.
组块学习（即从记忆中以更小的、分解后的信息单元学习和检索序列的过程）被假定为序列学习背后的主要学习机制（佩鲁谢和帕克顿，2006年）。然而，在连续序列反应时任务中，组块形成的证据一直难以捉摸，而其他连续的、统计性的学习过程却能很好地解释该任务中观察到的结果。本文基于对序列不同部分做出反应的方差，提出了一种新的指标来捕捉学习中的分割。我们通过比较一个对照组与另一个使用颜色编码来诱导统一分割的组的表现，来评估该测量方法的有效性。结果表明，当颜色编码与反应持续关联时，能获得组块化的证据，但在颜色去除后，组块化就无法维持了。
