Evidence for separate representations for action and location in implicit motor sequencing

Abstract

We examined sequential learning of actions in an experiment in which four different actions (push, twist, pinch, switch) were placed at four horizontal locations. At transfer, participants responded to a sequence that required performing the same sequence of actions at different locations and to a different sequence of actions at the same sequence of locations. Participants with explicit knowledge demonstrated only learning the sequence of response locations. However, participants with implicit knowledge learned the sequence of actions just as well as the sequence of locations, and performance on individual sequences was just as good as performance when both sequences were presented. These results demonstrated that two types of sequences, one of actions and another of response locations, can be learned simultaneously, suggesting that parallel representations are involved in implicit motor skill acquisition.