Patterns of interference in sequence learning and prism adaptation inconsistent with the consolidation hypothesis.
The studies reported here used an interference paradigm to determine whether a long-term consolidation process (i.e., one lasting from several hours to days) occurs in the learning of two implicit motor skills, learning of a movement sequence and learning of a visuo-motor mapping. Subjects learned one skill and were tested on that skill 48 h later. Between the learning session and test session, some subjects trained on a second skill. The amount of time between the learning of the two skills varied for different subjects. In both the learning of a movement sequence and the learning of a visuo-motor mapping, we found that remote memories were susceptible to interference, but the passage of time did not afford protection from interference. These results are inconsistent with the long-term consolidation of these motor skills. A possible difference between these tasks and those that do show long-term consolidation is that the present tasks are not dynamic motor skills.
D000222:Adaptation, Physiological / Q000502:physiology*; D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology; D010469:Perceptual Distortion / Q000502:physiology*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*