Processes of Skill Performance: A Foundation for the Design and Use of Training Equipment

The purpose was to lay a foundation for the design of low-cost training devices through an analysis of skill performance. Cognitive motor skills are analyzed in terms of the processing of information. Cognitive processes involved in both types of skills include task recognition task comprehension goal setting planning performance initiating, monitoring, and regulating performance stimulus encoding and elaboration attentional processes retention and retrieval of information hierarchical schemata for discrimination and generalization motivation and skill integration and automatization. For motor skills, special attention is given to structural characteristics of movements temporal characteristics of movements signal discrimination and generalization roles of sensory modes and their interactions and patterns of skill integration. Empirically based concepts are used throughout to provide an operational means of manipulating variables during training, and examples are given of methods for empirically assessing the roles of various processes. It is concluded that the analyses could be readily extrapolated to a training technology in general and to the design of training devices in particular. Selected research topics illustrate what could be involved in the extrapolation.