Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

An experiment is reported that was conducted to examine the possible value of higher-order consistency in skill development. Subjects made judgments about ordinal properties of stimuli. The presence or absence of consistency was defined by the type of decision – consistent or varied decisions. In both decision conditions the stimuli were inconsistent at the individual stimulus level; however, subjects making consistent decisions concerning the stimuli could make use of consistent relationships among the stimuli. Subjects in the consistent decision were faster and more accurate at identifying target stimuli when compared with the inconsistent decision subjects. In addition to the quantitative differences, subjects receiving consistent decision training were qualitatively different in performance when compared to the inconsistent decision group. The pattern of results from the present experiment is quite consistent with previous memory/visual search investigations. The experiment supports the suggestion that local level (or stimulus based) consistency is not necessary for automatic process development if task relevant higher-order (or global) consistency can be identified and used by the trainees.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Durso

F. T.

Cooke

N. M.

Breen

T.J.

Schvaneveldt

R. W.

(1987). Is consistent mapping necessary for high speed search? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 13, 223–229.

Fisk

A. D.

Scerbo

M. W.

Schneider

(1983). Issues in training for skilled performance. Proceedings of the Human Factors Society, 12, 392–396.

Fisk

A. D.

Schneider

(1983). Category and word search: Generalizing search principles to complex processing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 10, 181–197.

Fisk

A. D.

Schneider

(1984). Task versus component consistency in automatic process development: Consistent attending versus consistent responding. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 22, 330–332.

Fitts

(1964) Perceptual-motor skill learning. In Melton

A. W.

(Ed.) Categories of human learning. New York: Academic Press, 243–285.

LaBerge

(1975). Acquisition of automatic processing in perceptual and associative learning. In Rabbitt

P. M. A.

Dornic

(Eds.), Attention and performance V. New York: Academic Press.

Moyer

R. S.

Dumais

S. T.

(1978). Mental Comparison. In Bower

G. H.

(Ed.) The psychology of learning and motivation, Vol. 12. New York: Academic Press.

Myers

G. L.

Fisk

A. D.

(in press). Application of automatic and controlled processing theory to industrial training: The value of consistent component training. Human Factors.

Posner

M. I.

Snyder

C. R. R.

(1975). Attention and cognitive control. In Solso

R. L.

(Ed.), Information processing and cognition: The Loyola Symposium. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 55–85.

10.

Schneider

Fisk

A. D.

(1984). Automatic category search and its transfer. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 10, 1–15.

11.

Schneider

Shiffrin

R. M.

(1977). Controlled and automatic human information processing: I. Detection, search, and attention. Psychological Review, 84, 1–66.

12.

Shiffrin

R. M.

Schneider

(1977). Controlled and automatic human information processing: II. Perceptual learning, automatic attending, and a general theory. Psychological Review, 84, 127–190.

The Interaction of Bottom-up and Top-down Consistency in the Development of Skills

Abstract

Get full access to this article

References