516 Procedural Memory and Skill Acquisition
training environments should allow users to get started fast,
permit them to think and improvise, embed information in real
tasks, relate new information to what people already know,
and support error recognition and recovery. In other words,
good instruction should enable active learning while provid-
ing enough support to keep learners involved in useful tasks.
Skill Acquisition and Attentional Strategies
Skill acquisition depends on paying attention to the right
things at the right time. That is, an important aspect of skilled
performance is skilled attending. In many tasks, it is impor-
tant not only to know what to attend to, but howto attend to
it. Complex, dynamic tasks often require performers to di-
vide attention and processing resources among competing,
dynamically changing stimuli or task demands, for which pri-
orities must be established and trade-offs made. Important
questions in the training of complex skills concern whether
we are aware of attentional investments and can control and
allocate attentional resources.
One example of attentional allocation is distributing vi-
sual attention across a relatively large area and number of
processing items, or focusing it on a small area or number of
items (see the chapter by Egeth & Lamy). Learning to focus
attention appropriately could well be an important factor in
performance of many skills. Most work on the training of
attention comes from the study of dual-task performance in
which performers had to learn to prioritize their performance
of two tasks so that one was performed better at the cost of
the other (e.g., Gopher, Brickner, & Navon, 1982). With the
provision of augmented feedback, in which details of the na-
ture of the performance are given, people can learn to make
performance trade-offs and allocate attention according to
instructions (Spitz, 1988).
The training of attentional allocation and prioritization
strategies can have a strong and long-lasting influence on per-
formance. Gopher and his colleagues (see Gopher, 1993) have
shown that dual-task performance benefits more from training
under variable priority settings (e.g., Task 1 priority of 25, 50,
or 75%) than from training without priority instructions or
with only one priority (e.g., 50%). The higher ability of per-
formers who train under variable priorities seems to stem
from an improved ability to detect changes and adjust efforts
to cope with changing task demands. Gopher, Weil, and Siegel
(1989) implemented variable-priority setting in a training pro-
gram for the Space Fortress game (Mané & Donchin, 1989).
By requiring participants to change their emphasis on differ-
ent aspects of the game, they forced them to explore different
strategies of performance, thus overcoming limitations that
arise when learners lock onto a nonoptimal strategy early in
performance. Participants who performed under emphasis-
change conditions also improved in their ability to evaluate
their own peripheral attention abilities and thus to discover
minimal control levels. Gopher, Weil, Bareket, and Caspi
(1988) gave variable-emphasis training with the Space
Fortress game to groups of Israeli Air Force cadets who were
undergoing flight training. Although they received only
10 hours of variable-emphasis Space Fortress training, cadets
in the experimental group showed a 30% increase in program
completion. Practice with Space Fortress has also been shown
to improve the piloting performance of U.S. helicopter pilots
(Hart & Battiste, 1992).Automaticity and TrainingAttentional strategies can be trained, but to what extent can
people be trained to operate without attention? Many com-
plex tasks can only be performed because some task compo-
nents have become automatized, thus freeing up resources
for other components. Several researchers have shown that
training in tasks similar to visual search can lead to automatic
processing. Such training has been used successfully with air
traffic controllers to promote automatic processing of some
perceptual information, such as the distances between air-
craft, and indications of certain maneuvers, such as the start
of turns (W. Schneider, Vidulich, & Yeh, 1982). Shebilske,
Goettl, and Regian (1999) have developed a framework for
training that emphasizes the development of automaticity in
task components. They suggest that by determining the com-
ponents for which automaticity does not develop, one suc-
ceeds in identifying those components that play a controlling,
or executive, role in the performance of a task.Team TrainingMany tasks are performed not by individuals working alone
but by individuals working in teams. The basic principles of
skill acquisition and training apply to the individuals, but
teamwork brings with it special concerns. Some of the con-
cerns of teamwork fall within the domain of organizational or
social psychology, such as the organizational climate in the
cockpit and its contribution to air disasters caused by the re-
luctance of copilots to contradict or question the pilot’s ac-
tions. Being a part of a team can also, however, change the
way the individual carries out his or her work. Team workers
must be able to predict other team members’ behavior and
must be able to give and receive backup support. The perfor-
mance of many tasks requires knowledge of what others are