Hence, to analyze if cost-benefit patterns would appear regardless of knowledge, a sequence with longer runs of repetitions was used in the present experiment.
Specifically, the cost-benefit pattern varied neither through learning blocks, nor between groups of learners.
Nevertheless, a similar cost-benefit pattern was observed in all participants and in all learning blocks.
However, if the cost-benefit pattern was caused by automatic mechanisms, it should be observed regardless of the acquired knowledge.
Hence, the cost-benefit pattern was reliable in both RSI conditions and in both groups of learners (see below).
If, as has been often suggested, the cost-benefit pattern was the consequence of probabilistic fallacies, precise knowledge of the order would attenuate or change this pattern.
However, when several previous events are considered, a cost-benefit pattern is observed: response alternations are faster after other alternations but they are slower after repetitions.
To this point, these results challenge the idea of a strategic or active nature of the expectancies producing the cost-benefit pattern.
However, if sequential effects as the cost-benefit pattern were inevitable, they would be observed regardless of the ongoing subjective expectancy.
In contrast to the delay in the expression of the repetition effect, non-explicit learners showed an alternation effect, together with a cost-benefit pattern, since the initial random block.
