Orking Memory and Acquisition of Implicit Knowledge Y Imagery Training, without Actual Task Performance

bstract—This study investigated acquisition of a mirroreading skill via imagery training, without the actual perforance of a mirror-reading task. In experiment I, healthy volnteers simulated writing on an imaginary, transparent creen placed at eye level, which could be read by an expermenter facing the subject. Performance of this irrelevant otor task required the subject to imagine the letters inerted, as if seen in a mirror from their own point of view imagery training). A second group performed the same imgery training interspersed with a complex, secondary spellng and counting task. A third, control, group simply wrote he words as they would normally appear from their own oint of view. After training with 300 words, all subjects were ested in a mirror-reading task using 60 non-words, contructed according to acceptable letter combinations of the ortuguese language. Compared with control subjects, those xposed to imagery training, including those who switched etween imagery and the complex task, exhibited shorter eading times in the mirror-reading task. Experiment II emloyed a 2 3 design, including two training conditions (imgery and actual mirror-reading) and three competing task onditions (a spelling and counting switching task, a visual orking memory concurrent task, and no concurrent task). raining sessions were interspersed with mirror-reading testng sessions for non-words, allowing evaluation of the miror-reading acquisition process during training. The subjects xposed to imagery training acquired the mirror-reading skill s quickly as those exposed to the actual mirror-reading task. urther, performance of concurrent tasks together with acual mirror-reading training severely disrupted mirror-reading kill acquisition; this interference effect was not seen in subects exposed to imagery training and performance of the witching and the concurrent tasks. These results unequivcally show that acquisition of implicit skills by top-down magery training is at least as efficient as bottom-up cquisition. © 2005 Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of BRO.