ISSN 0439-755X
CN 11-1911/B

Acta Psychologica Sinica ›› 2016, Vol. 48 ›› Issue (3): 230-237.doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2016.00230

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Validity and sensitivity analysis of segment recognition task on implicit sequence learning

YANG Haibo1; LIU Dianzhi2   

  1. (1 School of Education Science, Minnan Normal University, Zhangzhou 363000, China)
    (2 School of Education, Soochow University, Suzhou 215123, China)
  • Received:2014-10-15 Published:2016-03-25 Online:2016-03-25
  • Contact: LIU Dianzhi, E-mail: liudzh@suda.edu.cn; YANG Haibo, E-mail: yanghbtm@126.com

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Abstract:

Sequence generation task, which was developed by Destrebecqz and Cleeremans based on the experimental logics of Process Dissociation Procedure, is one of the prevalent paradigms to disentangle conscious and unconscious knowledge acquisition in the sequence reaction time task. However, previous studies had indicated that the sensitivity of reproduction test is poor than that of recognition test. Moreover, sequence generation leads to variable Response-to-stimulus intervals (RSIs), but constant RSI interferes with the quality representations of the sequence during training phase. In this paper, we tried to development a Segment Recognition Task, which is a 3-element Recognition Test based on the experimental logics of Process Dissociation Procedure and Signal Detection Theory and keeps the RSI constant, in order to better separate conscious and unconscious influences on learning.
In segment recognition task, the hit means that subjects consciously or unconsciously identify grammatical sequential segment as grammatical, which is approximate to the inclusion test, P (hit)=R+A (1-R).The false alarm means that subjects unconsciously regard ungrammatical sequential segment as grammatical, which is approximate to the exclusion test, P (false alarm) = A (1-R). In the present study, we adopted two experiments to examine the validity and sensitivity of segment recognition task on implicit sequence learning.
Experiment 1 verified the validity of the segment recognition task, with RSI as an independent variable and sequence generation task as a criterion. The results indicated that the segment recognition task can separate conscious and unconscious influences on learning.

The purpose of the second experiment was to compare the sensitivity of sequence generation task and segment recognition task on measuring conscious and unconscious knowledge acquisition. We applied the sensitivity analysis of technical economy and included the involvement as independent variables to examine the contributions of consciousness and unconsciousness to implicit sequence learning. The results indicated that the contributions of unconsciousness to high-involved task in segment recognition task were better than that to low-involved task, while the contributions of consciousness to low-involved task segment recognition task were better than that to high-involved task. The results of the present study suggested that the segment recognition task was a valid measurement to capture the knowledge presentation in implicit sequence learning and this task also demonstrated superior sensitivity to sequence generation task.

Key words: implicit sequence learning, knowledge representation, process dissociation procedure, sensitivity analysis