Stéphanie Chambaron

gSRT-Soft: a generic software application and some methodological guidelines to investigate implicit learning through visual-motor sequential tasks.

Serial reaction time tasks and, more generally, the visual-motor sequential paradigms are increasingly popular tools in a variety of research domains, from studies on implicit learning in laboratory contexts to the assessment of residual learning capabilities of patients in clinical settings. A consequence of this success, however, is the increased variability in paradigms and the difficulty inherent in respecting the methodological principles that two decades of experimental investigations have made more and more stringent. The purpose of the present article is to address those problems. We present a user-friendly application that simplifies running classical experiments, but is flexible enough to permit a broad range of nonstandard manipulations for more specific objectives. Basic methodological guidelines are also provided, as are suggestions for using the software to explore unconventional directions of research. The most recent version of gSRT-Soft may be obtained for free by contacting the authors.

Variations méthodologiques dans une tâche de Temps de Réaction Sériel: quel est l'impact sur l'apprentissage

Dans une etude anterieure (Chambaron, Ginhac, Ferrel-Chapus & Perruchet, 2006), nous avons montre qu’il etait difficile, voire impossible, de reperer et d’apprendre implicitement une regularite presente dans une tâche de poursuite continue. De tels resultats viennent contraster avec l’apparente facilite selon laquelle il est possible d’obtenir un apprentissage dans des tâches de TRS. Comment expliquer cette difference? L’apprentissage en TRS est-il etroitement lie au materiel experimental utilise? Afin de repondre a ces questions, nous avons modifie une tâche de TRS classique afin de la rendre la plus similaire possible a une tâche de poursuite continue, dans le but de voir quel etait l’impact de ces modifications sur l’apprentissage: sequence repetee melee entre deux sequences aleatoires, utilisation d’une souris, ajout d’une contrainte de precision, deplacement autonome et «continu» de la cible. Les resultats indiquent que l’apprentissage continue a se manifester malgre les importantes variations methodologiques introduites. In fine, l’ensemble de ces experiences apporte des elements nouveaux en termes de procedure et de methodologie a utiliser dans des tâches d’apprentissage implicite, et ouvre la voie vers de nouvelles recherches.

Action, observation et imagerie mentale d'une action : Peut-on apprendre implicitement dans tous les cas ?

This experiment is aimed to study if an implicit learning can take place when participants practice, observe or mentally imagine regular displacements of a target in a Serial Reaction Time task (SRT). The results indicate that participants who really practice the task, and participants who realized motor imagery and also participants who made observation, learned the sequence, contrary to the participants who only made visual imagery. Indeed, times on target of these participants decrease significantly when a new sequence is introduced, which is not the case for the participants of the visual imagery condition. However, the results obtained with the recognition test do not enable us to definitively conclude about the nature of the learning (implicit vs. explicit). Finally, this study highlights that the motor imagery condition gives performance similar to those obtained in practice and in observation conditions, which represents an interesting contribution in the field of the psychology of the sport and cognitive psychology.