The effect of mental practice on performance in a dot-location RT task was
investigated. Participants (N = 40) were required either to mentally practi
ce, physically practice, or do no practice on an RT task in which the signa
ls appeared in a repeating sequence. Correct mental practice, as opposed to
incorrect mental practice and no practice, was predicted to have a positiv
e (enhancing) effect on performance of the RT task. Despite previous eviden
ce that mental rehearsal does enhance performance in many perceptual-motor
tasks, neither correct nor incorrect mental rehearsal affected subsequent s
equence learning; that is, no mental practice effect was observed. That sur
prising result is discussed in terms of motivational, psychoneuromuscular,
separate memory systems, and transfer-appropriate processing explanations o
f mental practice.