Verbal Prescriptive Rules in Cognitive Pretraining for the Vertical S-A Training Maneuver.

A study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of verbal prescriptive rules in cognitive pretraining for an instrument flight maneuver. Thirty male pilot trainees participated in the study. Each subject had acquired simple aircraft control skills, but was naive with respect to the experimental maneuver. The subjects were assigned to one of three treatment groups. The first group received systematically-developed rule sets covering the entire maneuver. The second was given only the simple maneuver definition, but was asked to generate and record a set of rules for the maneuver. The third group was given only the maneuver definition. The effects of cognitive pretraining were assessed by having the subjects perform the maneuver in an instrument flight trainer immediately following pretraining. All three groups showed comparable achievement in learning the motor task. The results indicate that subjects who already know the component elements of a task do as well when given a simple definition of the maneuver and performance criteria as do subjects who are drilled on sets of rules for performance. Author