The Resilience of Verbal Sequence Learning: Evidence From the Hebb Repetition Effect

In a single large-scale study, we demonstrate that verbal sequence learning as studied using the classic Hebb repetition effect (Hebb, 1961)-the improvement in the serial recall of a repeating sequence compared to nonrepeated sequences-is resilient to both wide and irregular spacing between sequence repetitions. Learning of a repeated sequence of letters was evident to a comparable degree with three, five, and eight intervening nonrepeated …