Serial pattern learning: Pretraining of runs and trills

In learning a repeating serial pattern of six lights, college students divided the event sequence into recurring subunits such as runs (1 2 3 4) and trills (3 4 3 4). The experiment showed that an ambiguous serial pattern (2 1 2 3 4 3 4 5 6 5) would be organized into runs, 2(1 2 3 4) (3 4 5 6)5, by Ss pretrained on a pattern of runs, and into trills, (2 1 2) (3 4 3 4) (5 6 5), by Ss pretrained on a pattern of trills. The profile of errors and the frequencies of run- and trill-overextension errors were symptomatic of how the test pattern was organized.