Retention and Transfer of Skill 517doing and of what they know. Salas and colleagues (e.g.,
Salas & Cannon-Bowers, 1997) refer to this knowledge as a
shared mental model. They suggest that this knowledge al-
lows team members to anticipate each other’s actions and to
maintain an accurate, up-to-date picture of the current situa-
tion (i.e., situation awareness). The question arises whether
there are special training procedures that promote such a
shared mental model.
Just as in the training of any task, the development of a
team-training program starts with task analysis. The commu-
nication flow between team members forms an important part
of the analysis. One training strategy unique to team training
iscross-training. In cross-training, team members receive
information and training in the tasks of other team members.
In addition to providing the team with backup knowledge
should a team member be absent, this may also contribute to
the development of a shared mental model. Volpe, Cannon-
Bowers, Salas, and Spector (1996) showed that 2-person
teams who received cross-training used more efficient com-
munication strategies and showed better task performance
than teams not provided with this knowledge.
Entin and Serfaty (1999) have argued that cross-training
is insufficient as a training method for teams who must
function in high-workload environments. They maintain
that special strategies are necessary to train team members to
recognize high-stress conditions and adapt their behavior
accordingly. They found that team performance improved
after participating in a training program in which participants
learned to recognize signs of stress and to communicate more
effectively by anticipating the information needs of other
team members.
RETENTION AND TRANSFER OF SKILL
Transfer of Training
According to Logan and Compton (1998), transfer should
occur between compatible tasks, where compatibility is de-
fined as a condition in which “traces laid down in one task
context can be used to support performance in another”
(p. 119). Orthogonal or incompatible traces will be of no use
and may even cause confusion if retrieved. This view is con-
sistent with the long-standing view that transfer will occur
when elements in the practiced task are also present in the
transfer task. This identical-elements view of transfer
(Thorndike & Woodworth, 1901a, 1901b, 1901c) is elegantly
incorporated in production system models of learning (e.g.,
Singley & Anderson, 1989). Many examples of positive
transfer of components of skill are given above. In fact, the
presence of transfer is often considered to provide the basis
for determining what has been learned in a training session.Long-Term Retention of SkillIt is an old adage that once you learn to ride a bicycle you
will never forget how to do it. In fact, even skills learned in
relatively artificial laboratory environments often show sur-
prisingly good retention. One example of this is the Kolers
(1976) study mentioned above. After 1 year with presumably
no practice, participants were still quite proficient in the skill
of reading inverted text, and they even showed some benefit
for seeing the same text again. Using the task of visual search
of displays with various numbers of elements, Cooke, Durso,
and Schvaneveldt (1994) showed retention of skilled search
ability, including no loss of visual search rates and a minimal
loss of search speed, after a 9-year period of nonuse. Further-
more, the savings were found for both consistent and varied-
mapping tasks. The fact that the search rate was maintained
suggests that essential elements of the search process were
retained. Participants also reported that they still experi-
enced a pop-out effect, in which consistently mapped targets
seemed to command attention even though 9 years had
elapsed since the development of the search skill.
The retention of skilled performance depends on the con-
ditions of training and the conditions under which retention is
tested. In general, as suggested by Kolers and Roediger
(1984), performance will be better to the extent that the pro-
cedures used by the performers during training are also used
in retention testing. Healy et al. (1995) summarize a variety
of studies on the learning and retention of simple cognitive
skills and conclude that retention will be the greatest when
retention requires the procedures employed during training,
when information received during training can be related to
previous experience and can be retrieved directly, when
trained information is made distinctive, and when refresher
or practice opportunities are provided (Healy et al., 1993,
1995). In other words, both procedures and information seem
to provide the cues necessary for retrieving information even
after long periods of nonuse.
The emphasis that Healy et al. (1995) place on direct re-
trieval fits nicely with instance accounts of skill (e.g., Logan,
1988) in which performance is said to be automatic when
performance is governed by retrieval. In other words, if auto-
maticity developed at the time of training, retention of the
skill is more likely. This point is illustrated by a comparison
of the Cooke et al. (1994) study mentioned above and a study
by Fisk and Hodge (1992), which also evaluated retention of