Executive Control in Learning: Evidence for the Dissociation of Rule Learning and Associative Learning

The dual-process account and the propositional account of learning hold opposite views regarding the recruitment of higher-level processes in rule learning and associative learning. Taking an individual differences perspective, the current study focused on the relationship between rule learning and associative learning and investigated to what extent executive control accounts for rule learning and associative learning. Two studies were conducted. In Study 1, a sample of 184 university students completed paired associative learning and rule learning tasks, as well as measures of working memory capacity, short-term storage, and executive control. Theory-based bifactor models were used to achieve a purified representation of executive control. The results showed that the latent correlation between associative learning and rule learning was rather small. Executive control showed a substantial relationship with rule learning, whereas no significant link was found with associative learning. In Study 2, a sample of 211 university students completed a three-term contingency learning task and an executive control task. The results replicated the finding that executive control was not significantly related to associative learning. Taken together, these results suggest a dissociation between rule learning and associative learning in terms of their underlying processes, which supports the dual-process account of learning.