Effect of Spatial Contiguity on Learning Sequences of Positions

Abstract

Four conditions of spatial contiguity of positions were used to assess sequence learning. Two sequences of 16 and 25 po-sitions presented in two matrices of 4×4 and 5×5 respectively were used. Within each matrix, 4 (in the 4×4 matrix) or 6 positions (in the 5×5 matrix) presented spatial contiguity. The place at the sequence in which contiguous positions occurred varied across groups. In this way, spatial contiguity of the 4 or 6 positions was presented at the beginning of the sequence (Group 1), in the middle part (Group 2), at the end of the sequence (Group 3) or it was presented a sequence in which all positions occurred without spatial contiguity (Group 4). 28 undergraduate students participated. Results showed no differ-ences among groups in the number of trials required to reproduce the sequence correctly. Number of errors was lower when contiguous positions were presented at the beginning of the sequence. These findings are explained as a possible effect of accentuation of primacy given by the occurrence of contiguous positions at the beginning of the sequence.

Keywords

• sequence learning
• spatial contiguity
• immediate serial recall
• serial order
• memory
• clustering