Two experiments served to test the hypothesis that partially masking speech with pink noise (Experiment 1) or speech babble (Experiment 2) induces particularly pronounced metacognitive illusions in judgments about the distracting effects of task-irrelevant speech on cognitive performance. We hypothesized that the experimental manipulations would…

Statistical learning enables humans to involuntarily process and utilize different kinds of patterns from the environment. However, the cognitive mechanisms underlying the simultaneous acquisition of multiple regularities from different perceptual modalities remain unclear. A novel multidimensional serial reaction time task was developed to test…

Sequence learning is fundamental to a wide range of cognitive functions. Explaining how sequences--and the relations between the elements they comprise--are learned is a fundamental challenge to cognitive science. However, although hundreds of articles addressing this question are published each year, the actual learning mechanisms involved in the…