Redundant sensory information does not enhance sequence learning in the serial reaction time task

Abstract

In daily life we encounter multiple sources of sensory information at any given moment. Unknown is whether such sensory redundancy in some way affects implicit learning of a sequence of events. In the current paper we explored this issue in a serial reaction time task. Our results indicate that redundant sensory information does not enhance sequence learning when all sensory information is presented at the same location (responding to the position and/or color of the stimuli; Experiment 1), even when the distinct sensory sources provide more or less similar baseline response latencies (responding to the shape and/or color of the stimuli; Experiment 2). These findings support the claim that sequence learning does not (necessarily) benefit from sensory redundancy. Moreover, transfer was observed between various sets of stimuli, indicating that learning was predominantly response-based.