Probability Learning: Contingent-Event Schedules with Lags

Millward, Richard B.; Reber, Arthur S.

doi:10.2307/1420964

Cited by 31 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…No SRT task studies have examined learning of fifth-or higher order probabilities. Using a different sequence learning paradigm, Millward and Reber (1972) showed that people could learn to use sequence elements as far back as seven trials to explicitly predict the next element in the sequence. Unfortunately, explicit prediction of sequence elements may have encouraged explicit sequence learning.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Implicit learning of fifth- and sixth-order sequential probabilities

Remillard

2010

Memory & Cognition

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Serial reaction time (SRT) task studies have established that people can implicitly learn sequential contingencies as complex as fourth-order probabilities. The present study examined people's ability to learn fifth-order (Experiment 1) and sixth-order (Experiment 2) probabilities. Remarkably, people learned fifth-and sixth-order probabilities. This suggests that the implicit sequence learning mechanism can operate over a range of at least seven sequence elements.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Implicit learning of fifth- and sixth-order sequential probabilities

Remillard

2010

Memory & Cognition

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“…After extended practice, subjects exhibit a substantial decrease in reaction time to target signals with predictable locations, although they are unable to articulate any of the complex rules that regulate the sequence of trials (cf. also Lewicki, Czyzewska, & Hoffman, 1987;McKelvie, 1987;Millward & Reber, 1972;Nissen & Bullemer, 1987). Implicit learning has been also shown for interactive process control tasks, in which the learner influences the nature of the stimulation he or she receives.…”

Section: Perruchet Gallego Pacteaumentioning

confidence: 97%

A Reinterpretation of Some Earlier Evidence for Abstractiveness of Implicitly Acquired Knowledge

Perruchet

Gallego

Pacteau

1992

The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A

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Reber and Lewis (1977) exposed subjects to a subset of letter strings generated from a synthetic grammar, then asked them to reorder scrambled letters to generate new grammatical strings. The distribution of the frequency of the bigrams composing their solutions correlated better with the frequency of the bigrams composing the full set of strings generated by the grammar than with the frequency of the bigrams composing the subset of strings displayed in the study phase. In his recent overview on implicit learning, Reber (1989) develops this experimental result into one of the main supports for his contention that studying grammatical letter strings gives access to the abstract structure of the grammar. However, this result can be accounted for by a set of biases inherent to the Reber and Lewis procedure. In the present experiment, a group of subjects learned from a list of the bigrams making up the study strings, a condition which precludes the abstraction of any high-level rules. The pattern of correlations outlined above also emerged in this condition, thus lending support to our re-interpretation.

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“…For example, the differences in response probabilities between structured and unstructured events observed by Millward and Reber (1972) decreased with increasing length of the stimulus patterns and were very small for the longest patterns (.52 vs . .47 for structured vs. unstructured events at pattern length seven).…”

Section: Short-term Memory Capacity and Degree Of Implicit Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of presentation rate and individual differences in short-term memory capacity on an indirect measure of serial learning

Frensch¹,

Miner²

1994

Mem Cogn

265

271

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In three experiments, we studied the relation between degree of implicit learning and two aspects of short-term memory: (1) the activation level of the to-be-learned information, and (2)individual differences in short-term memory capacity. In all the experiments, we used the Nissen and Bullemer (1987) serial reaction time paradigm or a modification thereof. The effects of activation level were assessed by experimentally manipulating the rate of presentation. Individual differences in short-term memory capacity were assessed via traditional span measures. The experiments demonstrated that the rate of presentation reliably affected an indirect measure of learning (i.e., response time) under both incidental and intentional task instructions and under both single-task and dual-task conditions. Short-term memory span was reliably related to the indirect measure of learning only in some experimental conditions. The findings represent important constraints for models of implicit serial learning and are discussed within a general framework for understanding implicit learning and memory.Serial learning is typically governed by the explicit intention to learn, as is perhaps most obvious in children's attempts to acquire the algorithms underlying mental arithmetic. Nevertheless, it appears that a good deal of serial learning is incidental and unintentional. For example, although most adults have learned to recognize and produce syntactically correct sentences, very few are, in fact, able to state the underlying rules of grammar. The purpose of the present article is twofold: (1) to describe a general framework for understanding implicit learning, and (2) to empirically test two of the predictions generated by the framework. The focus of our work is on implicit serial learning I-that is, the acquisition of serial information in the absence of explicit knowledge about the acquired information (see, e.g., Lewicki, Czyzewska, & Hoffman, 1987).We examine implicit serial learning by using a task originally introduced by Nissen and Bullemer (1987; see 95also Cohen, Ivry, & Keele, 1990;Knopman, 1991;Nissen, Knopman, & Schacter, 1987;Nissen, Willingham, & Hartman, 1989;Stadler, 1989Stadler, , 1992Willingham, Nissen, & Bullemer, 1989). In the Nissen and Bullemer task, an asterisk is presented at one of four different spatial locations that are arranged in a horizontal line on a computer screen. Each of the locations is mapped onto a different response key. The subjects' task is to press the key that corresponds to the asterisk's screen location. The asterisks are presented one at a time, and they follow either a repeating sequence or a random sequence of screen locations. Recent experiments with the Nissen and Bullemer task have primarily addressed three theoretical issues concerning explicit and implicit learning: (1) the independence of the implicit and explicit learning modes, (2) the role of attention in implicit learning, and (3) the nature of the learning mechanism(s) underlying implicit learning. Independence of Learning...

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Probability Learning: Contingent-Event Schedules with Lags

Cited by 31 publications

References 19 publications

Implicit learning of fifth- and sixth-order sequential probabilities

Implicit learning of fifth- and sixth-order sequential probabilities

A Reinterpretation of Some Earlier Evidence for Abstractiveness of Implicitly Acquired Knowledge

Effects of presentation rate and individual differences in short-term memory capacity on an indirect measure of serial learning

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