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. 2021 Oct;74(10):1697-1708.
doi: 10.1177/17470218211007138. Epub 2021 Apr 5.

Automatic effects of covert practice

Baptist Liefooghe  1 , Ariane Jim  1 , Jan De Houwer  2
Affiliations

Automatic effects of covert practice

Baptist Liefooghe et al. Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2021 Oct.

Abstract

Automatic behaviour is supposedly underlain by the unintentional retrieval of processing episodes, which are stored during the repeated overt practice of a task or activity. In the present study, we investigated whether covertly practicing a task (e.g., repeatedly imagining responding to a stimulus) also leads to the storage of processing episodes and thus to automatic behaviour. Participants first either responded overtly or covertly to stimuli according to a first categorization task in a practice phase. We then measured the presence of automatic response-congruency effects in a subsequent test phase that involved a different categorization task but the same stimuli and responses. Our results indicate that covert practice can lead to a response-congruency effect. We conclude that covert practice can lead to automatic behaviour and discuss the different components of covert practice, such as motor imagery, visual imagery, and inner speech, that contribute to the formation of processing episodes in memory.

Keywords: Learning; automaticity; covert practice.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of conflicting interests: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Schematic example of a block consisting of a practice phase and a test phase (Panel a); types of stimuli in the practice phase of that specific block (Panel b).
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Mean reaction times of the test phase in milliseconds as a function of Condition, Stimulus Type, and Stimulus Congruency. Error bars denote standard errors.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Boxplot of the response-congruency effects in milliseconds (Incongruent—Congruent) in the test phase per participant in the overt-practice and covert-practice condition. Circles denote participants.
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Mean proportion of errors in the test phase, as a function of Condition, Stimulus Type, and Stimulus Congruency. Error bars denote standard errors.
Figure 5.
Figure 5.
Boxplot of the response-congruency effects in the proportion of errors (Incongruent – Congruent) in the test phase per participant in the overt-practice and covert-practice condition. Circles denote participants.
Figure 6.
Figure 6.
Mean inter-spacebar-intervals in milliseconds in the practice phase as a function of Condition and Key-Spacebar Distance. Error bars denote standard errors.
Figure 7.
Figure 7.
Boxplot of the key-spacebar distance effects (Long—Short) in the practice phase, per participant in the overt-practice and covert-practice condition. Circles denote participants in each condition. Black circles indicate outliers.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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