Is the role of language in instruction encoding modulated by the stimulus materials used?

Recent studies have shown that language makes a crucial contribution to the encoding of novel task instructions. For example, Van 't Wout and Jarrold (2022) found that adults make more errors on a choice reaction time task when they performed a verbal distractor task (compared to a non verbal distractor task) during the instruction phase of the task. However, the precise contribution of language to instruction-based learning remains poorly understood. This study aimed to investigate whether participants use language to verbally label the individual stimuli that feature in each task, by manipulating whether the stimuli are easily verbalised or not. unknown other