Sterczyński, R. , Roczniewska, M. & Popławska, A.
Faculty in Sopot. Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities. Sopot, Poland.
In our studies we aim to verify whether implicit rules consume resources and how this phenomenon affects performance of participants. In two experiments conducted we decided to adopt sequence learning paradigm by using D2 Test of Attention (Brickenkamps, 1998). The task of the participant is to cross out signal letters among distracters in 14 rows, 20 seconds per line. Since in the original tool the exact same arrangement of letters is repeated every three rows, this task shares the features of sequence learning. To test the effect of such regularity on participants' performance, the orignal (regular) and modified (irregular) version of D2 Test was used. Unexpectedly, we observed better performance in irregular condition. The results lead to a supposition that such complex rule overloaded the processor and debilitated performance. In experiment 2 the test was presented in three conditions - without regularity, with 1-line regularity repeated in every three rows, with regularity in 3-line blocks. Moreover, the semantical vs perceptual nature of signal was taken into account. The results showed that a) perceptual signals were easier to detect than semantical; b) the 3-line blocks debilitated performance in both conditions; c) semantical signal impaired performance in one-line regularity only.