Consistency and Restructuring in Learning Cognitive Procedural Sequences

Ss practiced mental arithmetic tasks that were consistent or varied at two levels: the sequence of operations and the data for those operations. Experiment 1 demonstrated separable benefits of sequence- and data-level consistency. In Experiment 2, sequence and data consistency varied within subjects, and the sequence of operations did not match the goal structure. Final performance benefited from consistent data but not from consistent sequence. In Experiment 3, sequence consistency varied between subjects. Sequence and data consistency had separable benefits. The results indicate that Ss learn by restructuring given consistent data, but performing operations in consistent sequence improves performance without restructuring.