Characterising the declarative-procedural transformation in instruction-based learning.

Many accounts of instruction-based learning assume that initial declarative representations are transformed into executable procedural ones, so as to enable instruction implementation. We tested the hypothesis that declarative-procedural transformation should be bound to a specific response modality and not transferable across different modalities. In Experiment 1, novel stimulus-response instructions had to be implemented either verbally or manually either once or three times. Modality-specific procedural encoding was probed via a subsequent implicit priming test. This involved the same stimuli but required a response that could be either compatible or incompatible with the originally instructed response using either the same or a different response modality. We found that procedural encoding was modality-specific as indicated by a stronger repetition-dependent increase of the compatibility effect when response modality was unchanged. Explicit test performance, serving as a marker of declarative encoding, was independent of modality transition and it was uncorrelated with implicit test performance. Unexpectedly, the implicit priming test also revealed a small yet significant transfer to the response modality that was previously