Multimodal sequence learning

• Implicit sequence learning (ISL) was tested across modalities.
• Comparable ISL was found for visual, auditory, and multimodal sequences.
• ISL occurred only when correlated sequences were present.
• Randomly switching modalities within a sequence did not reduce ISL
• Elements from different modalities can be integrated into a unitary representation.

While sequence learning research models complex phenomena, previous studies have mostly focused on unimodal sequences. The goal of the current experiment is to put implicit sequence learning into a multimodal context: to test whether it can operate across different modalities. We used the Task Sequence Learning paradigm to test whether sequence learning varies across modalities, and whether participants are able to learn multimodal sequences. Our results show that implicit sequence learning is very similar regardless of the source modality. However, the presence of correlated task and response sequences was required for learning to take place. The experiment provides new evidence for implicit sequence learning of abstract conceptual representations. In general, the results suggest that correlated sequences are necessary for implicit sequence learning to occur. Moreover, they show that elements from different modalities can be automatically integrated into one unitary multimodal sequence.