Order, please! Explicit sequence learning in hybrid search in younger and older age

Wiegand, Iris; Westenberg, Erica; Wolfe, Jeremy M. · 2021 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.3758/s13421-021-01157-2

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Summary

This study investigates whether explicit sequence learning facilitates hybrid visual and memory search in younger and older adults, addressing a gap in understanding how aging affects sequence learning in complex cognitive tasks involving attention and memory. While sequence learning in simple perceptual or motor tasks is largely preserved with age, less is known about its impact on tasks requiring executive control and long-term memory retrieval. The authors hypothesized that explicit knowledge of a target sequence would allow observers to anticipate upcoming targets, thereby restricting search scope and improving efficiency. They further examined whether this benefit would decline in older adults due to age-related impairments in executive function and declarative memory. The research employed two experiments using a hybrid search task where participants memorized sets of four or 16 real-world object images and subsequently searched for any of these targets among distractors. In Experiment 1 (incidental learning), participants were unaware of the sequence structure; in Experiment 2 (intentional learning), they were informed that targets would appear in a repeating sequence. Participants included younger adults (18–35 years) and older adults (65–85 years), screened for normal vision and cognitive health. Performance was measured via response times (RTs) and accuracy, with explicit sequence knowledge assessed post-task using a two-alternative forced-choice test. Statistical analyses utilized mixed ANOVAs and Bayesian factors to compare RTs between sequence and random conditions across age groups and memory set sizes. In Experiment 1, only a subset of younger adults incidentally learned the sequence and acquired explicit knowledge, resulting in faster RTs for sequence blocks compared to random blocks. No older adults incidentally learned the sequence, and overall performance did not differ significantly from chance in the explicit knowledge test. In Experiment 2, where the sequence was intentional, both younger and older adults searched faster in sequence blocks than in random blocks. However, older adults demonstrated this sequence-learning benefit only when the memory set size was small (four targets). Older adults failed to show a significant sequence advantage when the memory set size was large (16 targets), indicating that the benefit was constrained by cognitive load. Accuracy rates were generally high and unaffected by sequence order, though younger adults made slightly more errors than older adults, suggesting a speed-accuracy trade-off. The findings indicate that explicit sequence knowledge facilitates hybrid search by enabling prediction of the next target, which restricts visual and memory search processes. Crucially, the study reveals that while older adults can utilize explicit sequence information to improve search efficiency, this advantage is limited by memory load. The inability of older adults to benefit from sequences in high-load conditions suggests that age-related declines in executive functions and declarative memory retrieval impair the application of sequence knowledge when cognitive demands are high. This highlights a qualitative difference in how younger and older adults leverage temporal order information in complex, real-world-like search tasks.

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• visual search