When it does hurt to try: adult age differences in the effects of instructions on implicit pattern learning

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Human Development

Background:

• Conscious effort can sometimes impede unconscious learning processes.
• Previous research indicates that trying to learn can impair implicit learning in artificial grammar and control system tasks.
• Age-related differences in cognitive functions, including learning, are well-documented.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if the negative effect of trying to learn extends to implicit learning of subtle sequential regularities.
• To examine whether this effect varies across different adult age groups.
• To explore common underlying processes in various implicit learning tasks.

Main Methods:

• An alternating serial response time task was employed with predictable and random events.
• Participants included young adults (20-23 years) and older adults (60-80 years).
• Two conditions were used: intentional instructions (aware of the pattern, instructed to learn) and incidental instructions (unaware of the pattern).

Main Results:

• Age-related deficits in implicit learning were observed in both intentional and incidental conditions.
• Older adults, unlike younger adults, showed impaired implicit pattern learning under intentional instructions.
• The negative impact of trying to learn was specific to the older adult group.

Conclusions:

• The findings demonstrate that consciously trying to learn can impair implicit learning of sequential regularities, particularly in older adults.
• This age-specific effect highlights a similarity across different implicit learning paradigms.
• The results support the hypothesis of common underlying neural and cognitive processes governing diverse forms of implicit learning.