Interference and Integration in Hierarchical Task Learning

A key feature of human task learning is shared task representation: Simple, subordinate tasks can be learned and then shared by multiple complex superordinate tasks as building blocks to facilitate task learning. An important yet unanswered question is how superordinate tasks sharing the same subordinate task affects the learning and memory of each other. Leveraging theories of associative memory, we hypothesize that shared subordinate tasks can cause both interference and facilitation between superordinate tasks. These hypotheses are tested using a novel experimental task which trains participants to perform superordinate tasks consisting of shared, trained subordinate tasks. Across 3 experiments, we demonstrate that sharing a subordinate task can (a) impair the memory of previously learned superordinate tasks and (b) integrate learned superordinate tasks to facilitate new superordinate task learning without direct experience. These findings shed light on the organizational principles of task knowledge and their consequences on task learning.