Across waves of a panel survey, panel members are repeatedly exposed to the same or very similar survey questions, which might lead to learning effects. We used data from 24 waves of online interviews in a probability-based panel survey to investigate the positive and negative effects of becoming more familiar with the survey questions. We found that respondents became increasingly faster when answering the same questions across waves. Our analyses revealed that this effect could be attributed only partly to satisficing response behaviors associated with negative learning effects (i.e. speeding). In fact, positive learning effects (i.e. answering faster because of greater familiarity with the response tasks) appear to be the primary driver of change in response times. In summary, our research suggests that learning across waves of a panel survey has a positive effect on response behavior, which researchers should consider in survey planning and operations.