Pa. Frensch et Cs. Miner, THE ROLE OF WORKING-MEMORY IN IMPLICIT SE QUENCE LEARNING, Zeitschrift fur experimentelle Psychologie, 42(4), 1995, pp. 545-575
The focus of the present work is on implicit sequence learning, that i
s, learning that occurs in the absence of an intention to learn and wi
thout explicit recall of what has been learned. Existing research has
primarily concentrated on three main issues: (1) the independence of i
mplicit and explicit learning modes, (2) the role of attention in impl
icit learning, and (3) the characteristics of the implicit learning me
chanism(s). One issue that has received little attention thus far is h
ow implicit learning ties in with the general cognitive architecture.
In 3 experiments, we studied whether the working memory model, formula
ted by Baddeley and Hitch (1974), provides reasonable constraints for
understanding implicit sequence learning. Subjects in all experiments
were asked to perform a sequential matching task in which the sequence
of target symbols followed a systematic structure. Experiment 1 demon
strated that sequences of phonological targets and sequences of altern
ating phonological-visual targets are learned better than sequences of
visual targets. Experiment 2 showed that phonological and visual sequ
ence information is learned independently in mixed phonological-visual
target sequences and is learned better than mixed phonological-visual
sequence information. Experiment 3 demonstrated that both familiarity
with the visual targets and presence of a phonological label for the
visual targets improve implicit learning of visual sequence informatio
n. Taken together, the findings imply that implicit sequence learning
occurs in a short-term store. The results are surprisingly consistent
with the working memory conception of Baddeley and Hitch (1974). Impli
cit sequence learning appears to occur independently in the two workin
g memory slave systems, phonological loop and visuo-spatial sketch pad
. Learning of sequences that cross the slave systems appears to be imp
aired and may thus not be coordinated by the Central Executive.