Effects of age and practice in sequence learning: A graded account of ageing, learning, and control

The influence of age and practice level was investigated in sequence learning by testing young, middle-aged, and older participants, who first performed a serial reaction time (SRT) task, either after a short or a long training phase (15 vs. 30 training blocks). Unknown to them, successive stimuli followed a repeating pattern. After training, participants performed a sequence generation task under inclusion and exclusion instructions, and a recognition task. SRT and generation data indicate (1) preserved learning and generation abilities in ageing and (2) beneficial effects of extended practice. By contrast, recognition data suggest that ageing tends to impair discrimination performance. Implications of these findings for understanding the effects of age and practice on the ability to control sequential knowledge are discussed in terms of the involvement of gradual representations of sequence structure.