The Use of Secondary Tasks in Adaptive Training

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to demonstrate the feasibility of conducting adaptive training by adapting primary-task difficulty on the basis of secondary-task performance. Sixteen subjects were adapted on the basis of primary-task performance, and 16 on secondary-task performance. These were matched by 32 fixed-training subjects, who were individually yoked to the adaptive-training subjects. Performance of subjects adapted on primary-task performance was superior to that of subjects adapted on secondary-task performance. However, the results show clearly that adaptation on secondary-task performance is practical and potentially useful. As in most previous studies, adaptive training was superior to fixed training.