The Optimum Presentation of Cognitive Training during a Flight Training Program

Abstract

Four groups of subjects (N = 8 in each group) were presented training, based on the cognitive aspects of a basic flight maneuver, at different times during the acquisition of the motor skills needed to perform that maneuver. Results indicate that the performance of the group that received extensive cognitive training prior to attempting the associated motor skills was significantly better (p<.05) than the groups that received the same cognitive training interspersed during the initial learning of the motor skills. This was true even when the interspersed training was preceded by extensive cognitive pretraining. Results also show that cognitive training interspersed with motor skill learning produced a deterioration in performance as the performance of the two groups receiving the training was below that of the control group which received no cognitive training whatsoever. Transfer of training to a similar maneuver indicated that the groups that were initially trained using extensive cognitive pretraining performed significantly better than the groups that received only interspersed cognitive training and the control group.