Sohn Myeong-Ho, Douglass Scott A, Chen Mon-Chu, Anderson John R
Department of Psychology, George Washington University, 2125 G St. NW, 313A Building GG, Washington, DC 20054, USA.
Hum Factors. 2005 Winter;47(4):742-52. doi: 10.1518/001872005775570943.
We examined critical characteristics of fluent cognitive skills, using the Georgia Tech Aegis Simulation Program, a tactical decision-making computer game that simulates tasks of an anti-air-warfare coordinator. To characterize learning, we adopted the unit-task analysis framework, in which a task is decomposed into several unit tasks that are further decomposed into functional-level subtasks. Our results showed that learning at a global level could be decomposed into learning smaller component tasks. Further, most learning was associated with a reduction in cognitive processes, in which people make inferences from the currently available information. Eye-movement data also revealed that the time spent on task-irrelevant regions of the display decreased more than did the time spent on task-relevant regions. In sum, although fluency in dynamic, complex problem solving was achieved by attaining efficiency in perceptual, motor, and cognitive processes, the magnitude of the gains depended on the preexisting fluency of the component skills. These results imply that a training program should decompose a task into its component skills and emphasize those components with which trainees have relatively little prior experience. Actual or potential applications of this research include learning and training of complex tasks as well as evaluation of performance on those tasks.
我们使用佐治亚理工学院宙斯盾模拟程序（一款模拟防空作战协调员任务的战术决策电脑游戏）来研究流畅认知技能的关键特征。为了描述学习过程，我们采用了单元任务分析框架，即将一项任务分解为若干单元任务，这些单元任务再进一步分解为功能级子任务。我们的研究结果表明，整体层面的学习可以分解为对较小组成任务的学习。此外，大多数学习都与认知过程的减少有关，即人们从当前可用信息中进行推理的过程。眼动数据还显示，在显示屏上与任务无关区域所花费的时间减少幅度大于在与任务相关区域所花费的时间。总之，虽然通过在感知、运动和认知过程中提高效率实现了动态复杂问题解决的流畅性，但收获的程度取决于组成技能预先存在的流畅性。这些结果表明，培训计划应将一项任务分解为其组成技能，并强调那些学员先前经验相对较少的组成部分。本研究的实际或潜在应用包括复杂任务的学习和培训以及对这些任务表现的评估。
