Optimizing the Long-Term Retention of Skills: Structural and Analytic Approaches to Skill Maintenance

Abstract

This research program seeks to identify the characteristics of knowledge and skill most resistant to decay due to disuse. The program is divided into analytic and structural approaches. We performed two types of research to investigate skill retention and maintenance using the analytic approach. The first investigated different laboratory analogues of component military skills; the second investigated parallel natural skills learned by the college population during their prior education. We have developed five laboratory methodologies and completed experimental studies using each of them. We have also identified four natural skills and gathered long-term retention data for each of these skills. For the structural approach, we designed an experimental paradigm that allows us to assess the detailed encoding of new knowledge at presentation and at delay using verbal report techniques and chronometric measurement of retrieval components. Keywords: Skills, Memory structure, Training, Skill maintenance. (JS)

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jul 01, 1990
Accession Number
ADA229519

Entities

People

  • Alice F. Healy
  • K. A. Ericsson
  • Lyle E. Bourne Jr.

Organizations

  • University of Colorado Boulder

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Coding
  • Cognition
  • Cognitive Science
  • Identification
  • Information Processing
  • Instructions
  • Instructors
  • Materials
  • Mathematics
  • Military Research
  • New York
  • Psychology
  • Social Sciences
  • Students
  • United States

Fields of Study

  • Education

Readers

  • Brain and Cognitive Science; Experimental Psychology; Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Instructional Design and Training Evaluation.
  • Systems Analysis and Design