The effect of overloading the memory capacity on rule learning

Abstract

The aim of this paper was to study the effect of overloading the brain’s channel capacity, using a secondary memory task, on rule induction. The main hypothesis was that overloading the channel would lead to an increase in rule induction. A dual task paradigm was used to overload the channel: an artificial grammar task was used to study rule induction and a secondary task was used to overload the channel. Two groups of participants were compared: one group with a secondary memory task (the experimental group) and one group with a secondary attention distracter task (the control group). The results showed that the experimental group performed worse than the control group on all test items. This contradicted the hypothesis. A possible explanation could be that the memory task was more demanding than the attention distracter task, leading to less explicit learning of the artificial language in the experimental group compared to the control group (as participants were more distracted). Compared to previous studies using the same artificial language, the control group seemed to perform better on the rule induction task. This could mean attention underlies the brain’s channel capacity. Independent measurements to account for individual differences in memory capacity and pattern recognition capacity were not significant as main effects. The results of this study can increase understanding of the brain’s channel capacity and language learning in general.