Intelligence matters for stochastic feedback processing during sequence learning in adolescents and young adults

Abstract The ability to effectively handle partly false feedback is an important skill because it can disrupt an already mastered ability. An instant and drastic deterioration occurred in 8- to 11-year-old children's sequence learning of four left-right button presses from close to ceiling performance with 100% deterministic feedback to about 30% accuracy when they encountered stochastic feedback that was only 85% correct and 15% randomly false (Lange-Kuttner et al., 2012). However, children's performance recovered in repeated trials, but only after positive feedback even if it was false. The present study investigates whether this deterioration and recovery from partly false feedback still occurs in adolescents and young adults. We tested whether coping with partly false feedback is dependent on intelligence with the Raven Standard Progressive Matrices Test, or rather occurs because of better developed coping and defending in the social domain with the Cognitive Emotional Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ). In a sample of N = 75 adolescents from 13 years onwards until young adulthood, cognitive performance was low when encountering stochastic feedback, at 55.5% accuracy on average, but improved during repetitions. Intelligence was more important than emotional coping for successful processing of stochastic, partly false feedback. Also in adolescence and young adulthood, positive feedback appeared to support perseverance as it yielded significantly more recovery than negative feedback. Coping was not needed for recovery from partly false or negative feedback, but there were some rare cases of high intelligence and low positive coping skills with exceptionally low sequencing performance.