Acquisition and long-term retention of a simple serial perceptual-motor skill.

Abstract

This experiment was conducted to determine some characteristics of the acquisition and retention of a simple serial perceptual-motor task. 100 male college students learned a circular sequence of 8 randomly paired toggle switches to a criterion of 2 consecutive perfect trials. Groups of 20 Ss each were retested after 1 min., 20 min., 2 days, 7 weeks, or 1 year, relearning to the same criterion. It was found that: (1) Ss took longer to relearn the longer the retention interval; (2) correct responses on the first relearning trial were fewer the longer the retention interval; (3) a marked serial position effect similar to that observed with serial verbal material appeared during both acquisition and relearning; and (4) this serial position effect was not associated in any detectable way with the degree of verbalization used, suggesting that such effect is due, not to the use of verbal material per se, but to the nature of the series learned.