Optimizing the Long-Term Retention of Skills: Structural and Analytic Approaches to Skill Maintenance III
Abstract
This research program identifies the characteristics of knowledge and skill most resistant to decay because of disuse. The program is divided into analytic and structural approaches. Two lines of research are used to investigate skill retention and maintenance using the analytic approach. The first investigates different laboratory analogues of component military skills, and the second investigates parallel natural skills learned by the college population during prior education. We have developed five laboratory methodologies and completed experimental studies involving each of them, and have identified four natural skills and gathered long-term retention data for each of these skills. For the structural approach, we designed an experimental paradigm to assess the detailed encoding of new knowledge at presentation and at delay using verbal report techniques and chronometric measurement of retrieval components. We completed several studies of retention of vocabulary items with this paradigm. In addition, we formulated a theoretical framework, on the notion of procedural reinstatement, and have used this framework to account for findings from many different facets of our research program, both analytic and structural.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jun 01, 1991
- Accession Number
- ADA239574
Entities
People
- Alice F. Healy
- K. A. Ericsson
- Lyle E. Bourne Jr.
Organizations
- University of Colorado Boulder