Skill Retention and Control Room Tasks

Abstract

In many occupations skills acquired during training will continue to be practised in the job situation, with reliable process plant many task aspects will not be frequently practised and some aspects may never be called upon. There is therefore concern over skill retention. Studies of skill retention are of some use here, although the main focus of attention has been the loss of skill in aerospace control tasks. The research suggests that skill loss should be expected to occur and to be related to the length of period of non-practice. The critical variables appear to be type of task performance required, type of original training, amount of training received and the amount and kind of retraining. Most encouragingly the research indicated that skill loss can be rapidly recovered, and that rehearsal techniques, some using low fidelity simulations, can ameliorate skill loss. The extent to which this research can be generalized to the tasls required in process control and power generation contexts can be questioned. The “cognitive” skills required here may have very different retention characteristics. The limited research that can be isolated as relevant to this issue is reviewed.