Effects of aging on implicit sequence learning: Accounting for sequence structure and explicit knowledge

The present research was intended to examine the sequence learning ability of elderly people - with a focus on comparing sequences with different structural characteristics and on properly assessing explicit knowledge. Experiment 1 showed that learning-related 'improvements in serial reaction time task performance were greater for young than elderly subjects, and elderly subjects were especially poor at learning a sequence with complex structural characteristics. Measures of recognition memory showed that neither young nor elderly subjects showed above-chance explicit knowledge of the sequences. Experiment 2 was designed to test the validity and sensitivity of the explicit recognition measures by comparing young subjects in groups given all random trials, given sequence trials with implicit instructions, or given sequence trials with explicit instructions. Experiment 2 confirmed the sensitivity of the recognition measures to explicit knowledge, so it is concluded that group effects in Exp. 1 reflect age-related differences in implicit learning.