Is the Hebb repetition task a reliable measure of individual differences in sequence learning?
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Date
2018Author
Bogaerts, Louisa
Siegelman, Noam
Ben-Porat, Tali
Frost, Ram
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Bogaerts, L., Siegelman, N., Ben-Porat, T., & Frost, R. (2018). Is the Hebb repetition task a reliable measure of individual differences in sequence learning? Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 71(4), 892–905. Doi: 10.1080/17470218.2017.1307432
Abstract
The Hebb repetition task, an operationalization of long-term sequence learning through
repetition, is the focus of renewed interest, as it is taken to provide a laboratory analogue for
naturalistic vocabulary acquisition. Indeed, recent studies have consistently related performance
in the Hebb repetition task with a range of linguistic (dis)abilities. However, in spite of the
growing interest in the Hebb repetition effect as a theoretical construct, no previous research has
ever tested whether the task used to assess Hebb learning offers a stable and reliable measure of
individual performance in sequence learning. Since reliability is a necessary condition to
predictive validity, in the present work we tested whether individual ability in visual verbal Hebb
repetition learning displays basic test-retest reliability. In a first experiment Hebrew-English
bilinguals performed two verbal Hebb tasks, one with English and one with Hebrew consonant
letters. They were retested on the same Hebb tasks after a period of about six months. Overall
serial recall performance proved to be a stable and reliable capacity of an individual. By contrast,
the test-retest reliability of individual learning performance in our Hebb task was close to zero. A
second experiment with French speakers replicated these results and demonstrated that the
concurrent learning of two repeated Hebb sequences within the same task minimally improves
the reliability scores. Taken together, our results raise concerns regarding the usefulness of at
least some current Hebb learning tasks in predicting linguistic (dis)abilities. The theoretical
implications are discussed.