Procedural memory effects in categorization: Evidence for multiple systems or task complexity?

According to an influential multiple-systems model of category learning, an implicit procedural system governs the learning of information-integration category structures, whereas a rule-based system governs the learning of explicit rule-based categories. Support for this idea has come in part from demonstrations that motor interference, in the form of inconsistent mapping between response location and category labels, results in observed deficits, but only for learning information-integration category structures. In this article, we argue that this response location manipulation results in a potentially more cognitively complex task in which the feedback is difficult to interpret. In one experiment, we attempted to attenuate the cognitive complexity by providing more information in the feedback, and demonstrated that this eliminates the observed performance deficit for information-integration category structures. In a second experiment, we demonstrated similar interference of the inconsistent mapping manipulation in a rule-based category structure. We claim that task complexity, and not separate systems, might be the source of the original dissociation between performance on rule-based and information-integration tasks.

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