Schedule of Events | Symposia

Sketchpad Series

Exploring the Role of Aesthetic Pleasantness on Implicit Learning

Poster Session B - Sunday, March 30, 2025, 8:00 – 10:00 am EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Erin Hugee¹ (erinhugee2028@u.northwestern.edu), Paul J. Reber¹; ¹Northwestern University

Implicit learning supports the broader process of skill learning by the extraction of statistical regularities during repetitive practice. This process is hypothesized to depend on the basal ganglia and dopamine-gated plasticity. Dopamine’s role in the experience of reward and learning suggests that increasing subjective pleasantness during skilled practice might accelerate the implicit learning process. Here we tested this idea using a multi-modal version of the Serial Interception Sequence Learning (SISL) task where we manipulated the subjective pleasantness of auditory information paired with learning cues. In the SISL paradigm, participants made precisely timed responses to moving visual cues that covertly follow a 30-item repeating sequence, where the six possible cues were each associated with an auditory cue. Participants were randomly assigned to either high or low aesthetic pleasantness, by using auditory cues that were either harmonious, consonant tones, or grating, discordant tones. All participants showed reliable sequence-specific knowledge at the end of 60 sequence repetitions, indicating robust learning of the covertly embedded 30-item sequence. However, no evidence was observed that the more aesthetically pleasant auditory conditions accelerated the learning rate. The auditory manipulation may not have sufficiently influenced dopaminergic function to affect the implicit learning process, or the reward-related aspects of dopamine may operate independently of skill learning. Alternatively, the aesthetically unpleasant auditory cues may have inadvertently increased attention to the cues and affected learning through mechanisms unrelated to reward. We speculate that implicit skill learning cannot simply be accelerated by making the learning context more aesthetically pleasing or fun.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Skill Learning