The Impact of Attention on People's Ability to Learn Two Statistical Patterns Simultaneously

While statistical learning has long been described as a learning mechanism that operates automatically across ages and modalities, there are a growing number of cases in which automatic learning is not observed, and in which attention seems to impact learning. In two experiments, we examined the role of instruction on adults' ability to learn two statistical patterns simultaneously. Results suggest that without explicit instruction to attend to either stream participants do not automatically learn both patterns. Moreover, results suggest that direct measures of learning (alternative force choice scores and explicit recall) are improved by instruction, while indirect measures (reaction time scores in a target detection task) are not impacted by instruction. This sets the foundation for future research to examine the effect that the development of attention has how children learn from their environment, as well as further our understanding of how automatic statistical learning actually is.M.A