Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine whether a new oculomotor serial reaction time (RT) task revealed statistical sequence learning in young children. Method: We used eye tracking to measure typically developing children's oculomotor RTs in response to cartoon-like creatures that appeared successively in quadrants of a monitor…

Sequential action makes up the bulk of human daily activity, and yet much remains unknown about how people learn such actions. In one motor learning paradigm, the serial reaction time (SRT) task, people are taught a consistent sequence of button presses by cueing them with the next target response. However, the SRT task only records keypress…

Sleep is considered to support the formation of skill memory. In juvenile but not adult song birds learning a tutor's song, a stronger initial deterioration of song performance over night-sleep predicts better song performance in the long run. This and similar observations have stimulated the view of sleep supporting skill formation during…

In the present study, we investigated possible influences on the unitization of responses. In Experiments 1, 2, 3, and 6, we found that when the same small fragment (i.e., a few consecutive responses in a sequence) was presented as part of two larger sequences, participants responded to it faster when it was part of the sequence that was presented…

The ability to learn temporal patterns in sequenced actions was investigated in elementary-school age children. Temporal learning depends upon a process of integrating timing patterns with action sequences. Children ages 6-13 and young adults performed a serial response time task in which a response and a timing sequence were presented repeatedly…

The study follows up on the contention that self-controlled feedback schedules benefit learning, because they are more tailored to the performers' needs than externally controlled feedback schedules (Chiviacowsky & Wulf, 2002). Under this assumption, one would expect learning advantages for individuals who decide whether they want to receive…

Study indicates that: "Verbal instruction could be employed to teach manual performance skills not only in science but in other subject areas and in industry as well." (Author)