Procedural memory is involved in the acquisition and control of skills and habits that underlie rule and procedural learning, including the acquisition of grammar and phonology. The Serial Reaction Time task (SRTT), commonly used to assess procedural learning, has been shown to have poor stability (test-retest reliability). We investigated factors that may affect the stability of the SRTT in adults. Experiment 1 examined whether the similarity of sequences learned in two sessions would impact stability: test-retest correlations were low regardless of sequence similarity (r < .31). Experiment 2 added a third session to examine whether individual differences in learning would stabilise with further training. There was a small (but nonsignificant) improvement in stability for later sessions (session 1-2: r = .42; session 2-3: r = .60). Stability of procedural learning on the SRTT remained suboptimal in all conditions, posing a serious obstacle to the use of this task as a sensitive predictor of individual differences and ultimately theoretical advance.

中文翻译：

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EXPRESS：串行反应时间任务的可靠性：如果一开始没有成功，请尝试再试一次

程序记忆涉及规则和程序学习基础的技能和习惯的获取和控制，包括语法和音系的获取。通常用于评估程序学习的串行反应时间任务 (SRTT) 已被证明稳定性较差（重测可靠性）。我们研究了可能影响成人 SRTT 稳定性的因素。实验 1 检查了在两次会话中学习的序列的相似性是否会影响稳定性：无论序列相似性如何，测试-重测相关性都很低 (r < .31)。实验 2 增加了第三个阶段，以检查学习中的个体差异是否会随着进一步的训练而稳定。随后的会话稳定性有小幅（但不显着）改善（会话 1-2：r = .42；会话 2-3：r = .60）。SRTT 程序学习的稳定性在所有条件下仍然不是最佳的，这对使用该任务作为个体差异的敏感预测因子和最终的理论进步构成了严重障碍。