Enhanced Implicit Sequence Learning in College‐age Video Game Players and Musicians

SUMMARY: We examined whether college‐age video game players and musicians are better than controls at implicit sequence learning in the Alternating Serial Reaction Time Task. People learn to use subtle sequence regularities to respond more accurately and quickly to predictable versus non‐predictable events. Although previous studies have shown experts’ enhanced processing speed and perception, this is the first to demonstrate that people who regularly play video games or a musical instrument showed greater implicit sequence learning, suggesting that experience playing games or music may improve the efficiency with which people learn sequential regularities in the environment. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Experience with playing video games or a musical instrument influences not only domain‐specific skills but also more general cognitive processes such as visual perception, attention, memory, multi‐sensory processing and processing speed (Boot, Kramer, Simons, Fabiani & Gratton, 2008; Brochard, Dufour & Despres, 2004; Donohue, Woldorff & Mitroff, 2010; Dye, Green & Bavelier, 2009a; Green & Bavelier, 2006; Rauscher, Shaw, Levine, Wright, Dennis & Newcomb, 1997; Schellenberg, 2004). However, no studies to date have examined how experience with video games or music is related to the ability to implicitly learn sequential environmental regularities, such as those that underlie language and procedural skills. The present study is the first to investigate whether experience with playing video games or a musical instrument enables people to be more sensitive to subtle regularities in their environment. Implicit learning can be examined by exposing people to subtle regularities (Reber, 1993) and is said to occur if individuals improve in the speed and/or accuracy of their responses to predictable events and yet are unable to describe such regularities. In this study, we use the Alternating Serial Reaction Time Task (ASRTT, Howard & Howard, 1997; Howard, Howard, Japiske, DiYanni, Thompson & Somberg, 2004), in which people make key presses to each of a series of targets appearing at different locations on a computer screen. In the ASRTT, a four‐element repeating sequence of pattern events alternates with randomly determined ones, such that some sequences of three events (high‐frequency triplets) occur more often than others (low‐frequency triplets) (Howard & Howard, 1997). Participants are not informed of any pattern, and sequence learning is measured by the difference in performance (reaction time and accuracy) between the last event in high‐frequency versus low‐frequency triplets. Because people fail to show explicit knowledge of the regularity even on sensitive recognition tasks, the ASRTT permits us to examine how people learn sequential regularities implicitly—without intent or explicit awareness of what they have learned. For both video game players and musicians, learning and responding to sequential events are important components of skill in their respective domains. If extended practice with sequences facilitates picking up new sequential regularities, then both video game players and musicians should show more implicit learning on the ASRTT than controls.