Procedural Memory and Skill Acquisition

Abstract

This chapter discusses the development, maintenance, and exercise of skilled behavior and the roles of explicit, declarative memory and implicit, procedural memory in the development of skill. The development of skill can be considered as a progression from a deliberative, declarative mode of processing to a more efficient, autonomous mode of processing in which performance is based on well‐learned associations. Progress has been made in understanding how perceptual‐motor and cognitive relations, skills, and proficiencies are acquired as a function of experience, and in understanding what sorts of experiences lead to the greatest improvements, retention, and transfer. Increasingly, research efforts have been devoted to understanding the role of attention in acquiring and exercising skill. The nature of the relationship between implicit and explicit learning remains a topic of debate. Some researchers suggest that implicit knowledge provides the basis for explicit knowledge, whereas others maintain that explicit knowledge is converted into procedural knowledge. Recent evidence suggests that implicit learning is independent of explicit learning, and that performance that is initially dominated by conscious mediation may come to rely on implicit knowledge developed as a result of task performance.