| | |
Summary: The Effects of Concurrent Task Interference on Explicit Category Learning
Brian Spiering and F. Gregory Ashby
Department of Psychology, University of California, Santa Barbara, 93106
Evidence from cognitive, neuroimaging, and neuropsychological studies
suggests that human category learning is mediated by multiple learning
systems. Recent neuroimaging studies suggest that these various systems
may compete during category learning. For example, Poldrack and Packard
(2003) reported late training activation in the basal ganglia that was
accompanied by medial temporal lobe de-activation. The present study
attempts to provide the first behavioral evidence of this hypothesized
competition between category-learning systems. One group of healthy
young adults learned novel categories under typical single-task conditions
during the first part of training and later while performing a simultaneous
numerical Stroop task. A second group learned the same novel categories
while performing the simultaneous numerical Stroop task the entire time. The
first group out-performed the second group until the Stroop task was
introduced then the first group's performance decreased to the level of the
second group.
Category Learning Systems
PFC = Prefrontal Cortex
|
