Role of verbal working memory in rapid procedural acquisition of a choice response task

Abstract

How quickly are instructions for a task translated into an effective task-set? If declarative working memory (dWM) is used to maintain a task's S-R rules until practice compiles them adequately into procedural memory, variables that affect retrieval from dWM should influence task performance while it is still dependent on dWM. Participants were trained on a series of 6-choice RT tasks, with a 1:1 mapping from object pictures to keys. In Experiments 1 and 2, an instruction phase — presentation of the S-R rules one by one —was followed by test trials. The phonological similarity of the objects' names significantly affected performance only during the first few encounters with the stimuli. Serial position effects were also consistent with retrieval from verbal dWM during those early trials. In Experiment 3, instruction onon the S-R rules was omitted, so participants had to learn the S-R mappings by trial and error alone; the effect of phonological similarity lasted longer, but still disappeared after a dozen encounters with each stimulus. Experiment 4 showed that instructions and just four trials of practice per S-R rule were sufficient to form a persisting representation of the S-R rules robust enough to interfere with later acquisition of a competing S-R rule after several minutes spent acquiring other task-sets. An effective and lasting task-set is rapidly compiled into procedural memory through instruction and early feedback; verbal dWM plays little role thereafter.