Explorations in the Automation of Sensorimotor Skill Training

The purpose of the study was to explore the feasibility of using a computer to teach a psychomotor task, i.e., operation of a 5-key chord keyset for binary coding. The other functions studied were mode of presenting prompts visual, tactual and effects of feedback upon performance. The automated visual and tactual prompting modes were compared with what might be considered to be a traditional mode, in which subjects Ss learned the code by referring to a code sheet. The results indicated that none of the methods of prompting was superior to the others. However, the fact that Ss could be taught to perform a psychomotor task by means of a computer is a significant advance in training procedures. The results also indicated that the provision of feedback aided performance for each of the prompting modes.