Influence of Mind Wandering and Increased Attentional Demands on Multitasking and Implicit Learning

The goal of the current study was to replicate resent findings that suggest mind wandering is associated with impaired explicit learning but not implicit learning, and to extend those finding by investigating whether explicit learning is impaired under attentional load, but implicit learning is not. We used a sequential learning task, specifically a serial reaction task (SRT), to determine if mind wandering would interfere with learning a task that does not require attentional resources (implicit learning). Participants completed the serial reaction time task while watching a 13-minute video lecture. At the end of the video participants answered 10 multiple-choice questions regarding the content presented in the video. At specific intervals during the task, participants responded to mind wandering probes. The probes required participants to report where their attention was in the moments before the probe appeared. Implicit learning was measured by decreased reaction time over the course of several blocks of trials of the SRT. In two experiments, it was observed that participants implicitly learned a sequence of 12 items, regardless of their performance on the multiple-choice item regarding the concurrent video content. Even those who appeared to actively engage with the video and performed well on the multiple-choice questions showed improved performance on the implicit learning task (SRT). These results suggest implicit learning can occur when one is engaged in a concurrent explicit learning task.