Perceptual similarity affects the learning curve (but not necessarily learning).
DOI: 10.1037/a0030865
archive: archived pipeline: cataloged verified
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Summary
This study investigates how perceptual and motor similarity among items influences motor skill acquisition, specifically addressing whether similarity facilitates or impedes learning, where in the learning process these effects occur, and whether they stem from stimulus or response properties. The authors utilized a modified chord learning task, where participants pressed simultaneous finger keys corresponding to visual stimuli, to disentangle the effects of perceptual similarity (visual cues) from motoric similarity (finger configurations). The research comprised three experiments. Experiment 1 controlled for initial production difficulty by equating response times (RTs) for similar ("dense") and dissimilar ("sparse") chords at baseline. Results showed that dense chords had longer RTs after practice than sparse chords, indicating that similarity hindered performance. Experiment 2 manipulated initial difficulty to determine if similarity affected the rate of improvement or the final performance level. Findings revealed that similarity affected the asymptotic RT rather than the magnitude of RT decrement achieved through practice. Experiment 3 isolated perceptual from motoric similarity by using Chinese characters as stimuli (eliminating perceptual similarity) while maintaining motoric similarity. This resulted in nearly identical asymptotes for similar and dissimilar chords, suggesting the previous deficits were driven by perceptual competition. Transfer sessions in Experiment 3, which introduced new perceptual stimuli for practiced chords, re-established performance differences, indicating that competition emerges among central representations coactivated by similar stimuli. The study concludes that perceptual similarity impedes the asymptotic performance level of learned items, likely due to competition among central representations triggered by similar stimuli, rather than slowing the rate of learning itself. Motoric similarity alone, without perceptual overlap, did not produce these deficits. These findings challenge simple interpretations of chunking theory, which predicts facilitation from shared components, and support models like instance theory where similarity can cause interference during retrieval. The results imply that in complex skill acquisition, such as language or music, the structure of perceptual inputs plays a critical role in determining final performance levels through competitive interactions in memory, distinct from the mechanics of motor execution.
Provenance
The full processing record for this entry. Every stage of this paper's journey through the pipeline is logged — what ran, with which tool and model, how many attempts it took, and when it last completed. Discovered via author_sweep_intake on 2026-05-28.
| Stage | Outcome | Tool | Model | Prompt | Attempts | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| discover | success | author_sweep | — | — | 2 | 2026-05-28 |
| archive | success | canonical_url | — | — | 7 | 2026-06-09 |
| extract | success | cached | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-10 |
| clean | success | clean | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-04 |
| chunk | success | chunk | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-04 |
| embed | success | embed | Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-8B | — | 1 | 2026-06-04 |
| enrich | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-28 |
| promote | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-04 |
| summarize | success | llm | qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant | summ-v5 | 1 | 2026-06-10 |
| tag | success | vector_similarity | — | — | 15 | 2026-06-11 |
| verify | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-10 |
Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.
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