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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Age differences in implicit learning of higher order dependencies in serial patterns | | Author(s) | James H Howard, Darlene V Howard |
| Journal title | Psychology and Aging, vol 12, no 4, December 1997 |
| Pages | pp 634-656 |
| Keywords | Learning capacity ; Age groups [elderly] ; Young adults [20-25] ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | The authors conducted three experiments to examine serial pattern learning in younger and older adults. Unlike the usual repeating pattern, sequences alternated between events from a repeating pattern and those determined randomly. Results indicate that no one was able to describe the regularity, but with practice every individual in all three age groups (including old old) became faster, more accurate, or both, on pattern trials than on random trials. This indicates that people of all ages spontaneously and unknowingly learn about subtle sequential regularities of the sort being studied: such implicit learning enables people to adapt to new routines and environments. The older groups in these studies showed less implicit pattern learning than the younger group. Also, unlike the younger people, the older ones failed to learn about third-order contingencies and failed to reveal pattern learning later when tested in a more conceptually driven production test. The mechanisms underlying these age-related deficits in implicit serial learning are yet to be determined. |
| Accession Number | CPA-980225002 A |
| Classmark | DE: BB: SD6: 7T |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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