Sanchez, Wesley, & Reber – CNS, 2011
Who reads the instructions, anyway? Explicit knowledge benefits perceptual-motor sequence learning independent of instruction.
Sanchez, D.J., Wesley, A.H., & Reber, P.J.
Motor skill training, outside of the laboratory, is typically accompanied by explicit instruction for the sequence of motor movements to be learned. However, expert performance is often unaccompanied by awareness of the sequence being executed, suggesting a role for implicit learning. Perceptual-motor sequence learning was assessed with, and without, explicit pre-instruction in order to examine the effect of explicit instruction on skill learning. Participants in the explicit instruction condition observed the 12-item training sequence five times before training, whereas in the implicit condition no mention was made of the repeating sequence. Both groups received 2880 trials of training with the Serial Interception Sequence Learning (SISL) task, followed by tests of implicit and explicit sequence knowledge. In the SISL task, cues scroll vertically towards targets on a computer screen and participants attempt to press a corresponding key when a cue reaches its target zone. Explicit instruction did not reliably affect sequence learning overall, but did lead to high levels of explicit knowledge in many, but not all, of these participants. Some participants in the implicit training condition acquired significant explicit knowledge as well. Participants were divided post-hoc into high and low explicit knowledge groups by the median of the sequence recognition test scores. Participants with greater explicit knowledge exhibited better learning of the embedded repeating sequence than those with only implicit knowledge, after an initial period of similar performance. This suggests that even with a continuous performance task requiring precisely timed responses, explicit knowledge provides a benefit to procedural learning. (249)
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