When learning a new skill, even if we have been instructed exactly what to do, it is often necessary to practice for hours, weeks or months before we achieve proficient and fluid performance. Practice has a multitude of effects on behavior, including increasing the speed of performance, rendering the practiced behavior habitual and reducing the cognitive load required to perform the task. These effects are often collectively referred to as automaticity. Here, we argue that these effects can be explained as multiple consequences of a single principle: caching of the outcome of frequently occurring computations. We further argue that, in the context of more complex task representations, caching different intermediate computations can give rise to more nuanced behavioral signatures, including dissociation between skill, habit and cognitive load.

当学习一项新技能时，即使我们被明确指示要做什么，通常也需要练习数小时、数周或数月才能达到熟练且流畅的表现。练习对行为有多种影响，包括提高执行速度、使练习的行为成为习惯以及减少执行任务所需的认知负荷。这些效应通常统称为自动性。在这里，我们认为这些影响可以解释为单一原则的多重后果：缓存频繁发生的计算的结果。我们进一步认为，在更复杂的任务表示的背景下，缓存不同的中间计算可能会产生更细微的行为特征，包括技能、习惯和认知负荷之间的分离。