Abstract
Consolidation, a process that stabilizes memory trace after initial acquisition, has been studied for over a century. A number of studies have shown that a skill or memory must be consolidated after acquisition so that it becomes resistant to interference from new information. Previous research found that training on a peripheral 3-dot hyperacuity task could retrogradely interfere with earlier training on the same task but with a mirrored stimulus configuration. However, a recent study failed to replicate this finding. Here we address the controversy by replicating both patterns of results, however, under different experimental settings. We find that retrograde interference occurs when eye-movements are tightly controlled, using a gaze-contingent display, where the peripheral stimuli were only presented when subjects maintained fixation. On the other hand, no retrograde interference was found in a group of subjects who performed the task without this fixation control. Our results provide a plausible explanation of why divergent results were found for retrograde interference in perceptual learning on the 3-dot hyperacuity task and confirm that retrograde interference can occur in this type of low-level perceptual learning. Furthermore, our results demonstrate the importance of eye-movement controls in studies of perceptual learning in the peripheral visual field.
Highlights
Consolidation, a process that stabilizes memory or skills after initial acquisition, has been studied over a century as a central issue in learning and memory [1]
This study suggested that visual perceptual learning requires a stabilization process to consolidate before being resistant to interference by a second stimulus, and that this interference is specific to the location and orientation of the stimuli
A group run without the eye-tracker showed no retrograde disruption of task B on task A, similar to the findings of Aberg and Herzog [12]. These results suggest that visual perceptual learning of peripheral 3-dot hyperacuity can suffer from retrograde interference when subjects’ eye movements are controlled
Summary
Consolidation, a process that stabilizes memory or skills after initial acquisition, has been studied over a century as a central issue in learning and memory [1]. While consolidation involves multiple sub-processes [2], a key aspect of consolidation involves building up a resistance from interference of new learning This process of stabilization has been studied in learning of word lists [1], motor learning tasks [2,3,4,5,6], and perceptual learning [7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17], and across these disciplines it has been observed that practice with two tasks (Task A and Task B) in close temporal proximity can result in interference from Task B on Task A. These divergent findings bring into question whether there are common mechanisms of stabilization that are involved in different experimental domains, and, in some cases, bring into question the veracity of certain findings
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