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Divided attention does not affect the acquisition and consolidation of transitional probabilities

Statistical learning facilitates the efficient processing and prediction of environmental events and contributes to the acquisition of automatic behaviors. Whereas a minimal level of attention seems to be required for learning to occur, it is still unclear how acquisition and consolidation of statis...

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Autores principales: Horváth, Kata, Török, Csenge, Pesthy, Orsolya, Nemeth, Dezso, Janacsek, Karolina
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7775459/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33384423
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-79232-y
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author Horváth, Kata
Török, Csenge
Pesthy, Orsolya
Nemeth, Dezso
Janacsek, Karolina
author_facet Horváth, Kata
Török, Csenge
Pesthy, Orsolya
Nemeth, Dezso
Janacsek, Karolina
author_sort Horváth, Kata
collection PubMed
description Statistical learning facilitates the efficient processing and prediction of environmental events and contributes to the acquisition of automatic behaviors. Whereas a minimal level of attention seems to be required for learning to occur, it is still unclear how acquisition and consolidation of statistical knowledge are affected when attention is divided during learning. To test the effect of divided attention on statistical learning and consolidation, ninety-six healthy young adults performed the Alternating Serial Reaction Time task in which they incidentally acquired second-order transitional probabilities. Half of the participants completed the task with a concurrent secondary intentional sequence learning task that was applied to the same stimulus stream. The other half of the participants performed the task without any attention manipulation. Performance was retested after a 12-h post-learning offline period. Half of each group slept during the delay, while the other half had normal daily activity, enabling us to test the effect of delay activity (sleep vs. wake) on the consolidation of statistical knowledge. Divided attention had no effect on statistical learning: The acquisition of second-order transitional probabilities was comparable with and without the secondary task. Consolidation was neither affected by divided attention: Statistical knowledge was similarly retained over the 12-h delay, irrespective of the delay activity. Our findings can contribute to a better understanding of the role of attentional processes in and the robustness of visuomotor statistical learning and consolidation.
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spelling pubmed-77754592021-01-07 Divided attention does not affect the acquisition and consolidation of transitional probabilities Horváth, Kata Török, Csenge Pesthy, Orsolya Nemeth, Dezso Janacsek, Karolina Sci Rep Article Statistical learning facilitates the efficient processing and prediction of environmental events and contributes to the acquisition of automatic behaviors. Whereas a minimal level of attention seems to be required for learning to occur, it is still unclear how acquisition and consolidation of statistical knowledge are affected when attention is divided during learning. To test the effect of divided attention on statistical learning and consolidation, ninety-six healthy young adults performed the Alternating Serial Reaction Time task in which they incidentally acquired second-order transitional probabilities. Half of the participants completed the task with a concurrent secondary intentional sequence learning task that was applied to the same stimulus stream. The other half of the participants performed the task without any attention manipulation. Performance was retested after a 12-h post-learning offline period. Half of each group slept during the delay, while the other half had normal daily activity, enabling us to test the effect of delay activity (sleep vs. wake) on the consolidation of statistical knowledge. Divided attention had no effect on statistical learning: The acquisition of second-order transitional probabilities was comparable with and without the secondary task. Consolidation was neither affected by divided attention: Statistical knowledge was similarly retained over the 12-h delay, irrespective of the delay activity. Our findings can contribute to a better understanding of the role of attentional processes in and the robustness of visuomotor statistical learning and consolidation. Nature Publishing Group UK 2020-12-31 /pmc/articles/PMC7775459/ /pubmed/33384423 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-79232-y Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Horváth, Kata
Török, Csenge
Pesthy, Orsolya
Nemeth, Dezso
Janacsek, Karolina
Divided attention does not affect the acquisition and consolidation of transitional probabilities
title Divided attention does not affect the acquisition and consolidation of transitional probabilities
title_full Divided attention does not affect the acquisition and consolidation of transitional probabilities
title_fullStr Divided attention does not affect the acquisition and consolidation of transitional probabilities
title_full_unstemmed Divided attention does not affect the acquisition and consolidation of transitional probabilities
title_short Divided attention does not affect the acquisition and consolidation of transitional probabilities
title_sort divided attention does not affect the acquisition and consolidation of transitional probabilities
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7775459/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33384423
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-79232-y
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