INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCE IN REPETITION PRIMING AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO DECLARATIVE KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION

We report two studies that investigated the relationship between repet ition-priming effects (i.e., performance facilitation observed in the repetition of a processing event) and declarative knowledge acquisitio n within repetitive practice paradigms. The first study related repeti tion priming to paired associate learning, and the second study relate d repetition priming to the acquisition of computer programming concep ts. Differences in working memory, semantic knowledge, and semantic pr ocessing speed were also investigated in relation to both repetition p riming and learning. In both studies, individual differences in repeti tion-priming effects uniquely predicted learning differences relative to the other cognitive measures. Results are discussed with respect to the potential importance of individual differences in implicit memory phenomena in some forms of declarative learning.