Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

How people learn and produce sequential actions (e.g., making coffee) has been the subject of empirical and theoreticalscrutiny, for it covers most human activities. One useful distinction is between stimulus-based control, in which actionselection is driven largely by the environment, and plan-based control, which assumes learning of structured sequences ofactions and effects. Task demands, instructions, and participants’ individual abilities and inclinations can all modulate thecontrol mode used. We investigate two sequence learning tasks, with one key difference: in the cued task either controlmode is possible, while learning in the reinforcement task requires plan-based control. Using measures of visuospatialworking memory (VWM) capacity, locus of control, need for structure, and IQ, we seek to explain individual differencesin choice of control mode and task performance, establishing a link between VWM capacity and performance, as well asexplicit knowledge evidencing plan-based control.