Abstract
Major, rapid performance improvements in perceptual training are often dismissed as 'task' or 'procedural' learning because they are fast and generalize within a task. We assessed the contributions of perceptual and procedural learning to improvement in an auditory tone frequency learning task in humans and found that perceptual learning accounted for between 76% and 98% of the rapid early performance improvement.
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Acknowledgements
We thank S. Cirstea for assistance with statistical analysis. This research was entirely supported by the Medical Research Council (UK).
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D.J.C. Hawkey and S.A. declare that they have no competing financial interests. D.R.M. is the founder and a shareholder of MindWeavers Ltd., a company developing and selling computer-game training products.
Supplementary information
Supplementary Fig. 1
Frequency-discrimination sensitivity for two additional groups of normally hearing adult listeners with and without prior procedural training. The “Frequency” Group (n = 11) performed 6 blocks of 200 trials on a 2I-2AFC frequency discrimination task (same as Group 1, except that two rather than five interleaved tracks of 100 trials were used). The “Intensity” Group (n = 12) performed two blocks (400 trials) of 2I-2AFC intensity discrimination (same as Group 3, but with two interleaved tracks per block; data not shown), followed by four blocks (200 trials each) of frequency discrimination. The dotted line shows the data from the “Intensity” Group transposed to indicate the block number on the frequency-discrimination task. The “Intensity” Group showed no advantage in frequency discrimination for having performed a different perceptual judgment using the same procedure. (GIF 8 kb)
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Quantifying procedural and perceptual components of learning. (PDF 41 kb)
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Hawkey, D., Amitay, S. & Moore, D. Early and rapid perceptual learning. Nat Neurosci 7, 1055–1056 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1315
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1315
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