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Age‐related differences in sequence learning: Findings from two visuo‐motor sequence learning tasks
Author(s) -
Urry Kristi,
Burns Nicholas R.,
Baetu Irina
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
british journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.536
H-Index - 92
eISSN - 2044-8295
pISSN - 0007-1269
DOI - 10.1111/bjop.12299
Subject(s) - serial reaction time , psychology , task (project management) , sequence learning , motor learning , sequence (biology) , cognitive psychology , audiology , significant difference , analysis of variance , developmental psychology , neuroscience , statistics , machine learning , computer science , medicine , mathematics , management , biology , economics , genetics
The Serial Reaction Time Task ( SRTT ) is thought to assess implicit learning, which seems to be preserved with age. However, the reaction time ( RT ) measures employed on implicit‐like tasks might be too unreliable to detect individual differences. We investigated whether RT ‐based measures mask age effects by comparing the performance of 43 younger and 35 older adults on SRTT and an explicit‐like Predictive Sequence Learning Task ( PSLT ). RT ‐based measures (difference scores and a ratio) were collected for both tasks, and accuracy was additionally measured for PSLT . We also measured fluid abilities. The RT ‐difference scores indicated preserved SRTT and PSLT performance with age and did not correlate with fluid abilities, while ratio RT and the accuracy‐based measures indicated age‐related decline and correlated with fluid abilities. Therefore, RT ‐difference scores might mask individual differences, which compromises the interpretation of previous studies using SRTT .