Intact implicit statistical learning in borderline personality disorder

Abstract

A B S T R A C TWide-spread neuropsychological deficits have been identified in borderline personality disorder (BPD). Previous research found impairments in decision making, declarative memory, working memory and executive functions; however, no studies have focused on implicit learning in BPD yet. The aim of our study was to investigate implicit statistical learning by comparing learning performance of 19 BPD patients and 19 healthy, age-, education-and gender-matched controls on a probabilistic sequence learning task. Moreover, we also tested whether participants retain the acquired knowledge after a delay period. To this end, participants were retested on a shorter version of the same task 24 h after the learning phase. We found intact implicit statistical learning as well as retention of the acquired knowledge in this personality disorder. BPD patients seem to be able to extract and represent regularities implicitly, which is in line with the notion that implicit learning is less susceptible to illness compared to the more explicit processes.

Retrieval of a well-established skill is resistant to distraction: evidence from an implicit probabilistic sequence learning task

“…Overall, high-probability triplets occur with approximately 62.5% probability during the task, while the remaining 48 low-probability triplets only occur with 37.5% probability ( Figure 1B). As the participants practice the ASRT task, their responses become faster and more accurate to the high-probability triplets compared to the lowprobability ones, revealing statistical learning throughout the task (J. H. Howard & Howard, 1997;Kobor et al, 2017;Song, Howard, & Howard, 2007;Unoka et al, 2017).…”

“…1-2-1) and repetitions (e.g. 1-1-1) were eliminated from the analysis because participants may show pre-existing response tendencies for these types of triplets (D. V Howard et al, 2004; Borbély-Ipkovich, Nemeth, & Gonda, 2018;Takács et al, 2018;Unoka et al, 2017). The first button presses were also excluded from the analysis (first 5 random button presses, and the 6 th and the 7 th , as they cannot be evaluated as the third element of a triplet).…”

Is there more room to improve? The lifespan trajectory of procedural learning and its relationship to the between- and within-group differences in average response times

“…The repeating alternating sequence results in some stimulus combinations (so-called triplets) being more frequent than others, and during practice participants learn to differentiate between these more frequent and less frequent stimulus combinations (often referred to as triplet or statistical learning; Janacsek, Borbély-Ipkovich, Nemeth, & Gonda, 2018;Unoka et al, 2017). At the same time, independent of task-specific learning, participants become generally faster as the task progresses (often referred to as general skill learning).…”

Intention to learn differentially affects subprocesses of procedural learning and consolidation: Evidence from a probabilistic sequence learning task

“…The timing of an experimental trial was the following: The duration of stimulus presentation was 500 ms (when participants were required to respond to the stimulus), then the four empty circles were presented for 120 m before the next stimulus appeared, thus, the total ISI was 700 ms. These values are defined based on previous studies investigating healthy young adults, where participants had an average response time under 450 ms at the beginning of the task and 430 ms by the end of the Learning Phase Nemeth, Janacsek, Polner, & Kovacs, 2013;Tóth et al, 2017;Unoka et al, 2017).…”

“…It has been well documented that participants do not become aware of the underlying statistical/sequence structure embedded in the classic, incidental version of the ASRT task even after extended practice (e.g., ten days (Song, Howard, & Howard, 2007a)); and when examined with more sensitive recognition tests (D. Howard et al, 2004), thus it indeed measures incidental learning. Nevertheless, to ascertain that the sequence structure of the ASRT task and the learning situation itself remained fully implicit in the Incidental group in the current study, a short questionnaire was administered after the Testing Phase, similar to previous studies Song et al, 2007a;Unoka et al, 2017). Participants were asked whether they observed any regularity in the task.…”