Retrieval of a well-established skill is resistant to distraction: Evidence from an implicit probabilistic sequence learning task

Vékony, Teodóra and Török, Lilla and Pedraza, Felipe and Schipper, Kate and Pleche, Claire and Tóth, László and Janacsek, Karolina and Németh, Dezső (2020) Retrieval of a well-established skill is resistant to distraction: Evidence from an implicit probabilistic sequence learning task. PLOS ONE. ISSN 1932-6203

Preview

Text Vekony_dual_task_PloS_One_20.pdf Download (1MB) | Preview

Abstract

The characteristics of acquiring new sequence information under dual-task situations have been extensively studied. A concurrent task has often been found to affect performance. In real life, however, we mostly perform a secondary task when the primary task is already well acquired. The effect of a secondary task on the ability to retrieve well-established sequence representations remains elusive. The present study investigates whether accessing well-acquired probabilistic sequence knowledge is affected by a concurrent task. Participants acquired non-adjacent regularities in an implicit probabilistic sequence learning task. After a 24-hour offline period, participants were tested on the same probabilistic sequence learning task under dual-task or single-task conditions. Here, we show that although the secondary task significantly prolonged the overall reaction times in the primary (sequence learning) task, access to the previously learned probabilistic representations remained intact. Our results highlight the importance of studying the dual-task effect not only in the learning phase but also during memory access to reveal the robustness of the acquired skill.

Actions (login required)

Edit Item