EFFECTS OF SEQUENCE LENGTH AND STRUCTURE ON IMPLICIT SERIAL-LEARNING

Some data suggest that, as in explicit serial learning, longer sequenc es are more difficult to learn implicitly. These findings have been us ed to support the inference that implicit learning is capacity-limited . However, investigations of the effect of sequence length on implicit learning have confounded sequence structure with sequence length. The se factors were manipulated independently in 3 experiments using a ser ial reaction time task. The results showed that sequence structure, no t sequence length, largely determines the extent of sequence learning.