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Age-Related Differences in Implicit Learning of Subtle Third-Order Sequential Structure

<¹ Department of Psychology and ² Department of Neurology, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.
³ Department of Psychology, Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C.

Address correspondence to Ilana J. Bennett, Department of Psychology, Georgetown University, 301 N. White Gravenor Building, Washington, DC, 20057. E-mail: ijb5{at}georgetown.edu

Age-related implicit learning deficits increase with sequence complexity, suggesting there might be limits to the level of structure that older adults can learn implicitly. To test for such limits, we had 12 younger and 12 older adults complete an alternating serial reaction time task containing subtle structure in which every third trial follows a repeating sequence and intervening trials are determined randomly. Results revealed significant age deficits in learning. However, both groups did learn the subtle regularity without explicit awareness, indicating that older adults remain sensitive to highly complex sequential regularities in their environment, albeit to a lesser degree than younger adults.

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