Specific Sequence Effects in the Serial Reaction Time Task

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Serial Reaction Time (SRT) task was used in 2 experiments to determine if the specific sequence used by the task influences implicit learning. In Experiment 1, participants performed the SRT task with the locations of the stimuli determined by a commonly used fixed sequence (taken from P. J. Reber & L. R. Squire, 1998), by a fixed sequence that was uniquely generated for each participant, or at random. Experiment 2 used the same basic design, but the random condition was changed so that each possible transition between responses was seen the same number of times, making it more comparable to the fixed-sequence conditions. Results from both experiments indicate that the specific sequence used in the SRT task influences the strength of implicit learning effects. Follow-up analyses show that the strength of implicit learning can be linked to the presence of particular types of triads within the sequence. The authors suggest that future researchers should not use on a single fixed sequence across all participants when using the SRT task but should instead generate different fixed sequences for each participant to enhance the generalizability of their results.