The Effect of Prior Experience on Acquiring Skill a Simulated Inertial Control Task

The performance of test pilots and college student subjects in acquiring the skill o control the attitude of a simulated space vehicle was compared. The purpose of the comparison was to investigate transfer of training to this type of task as a function of prior pilot experience and determine the degree to which one may generalize from students to pilots. There was also a further breakdown of the student group into experimental subgroups to assess the effects of type of control/display relationship and the order of part training on the acquisition of the vehicular control task. The secondary comparisons within the student group were to determine optimal training conditions to make the comparison with the pilots as equitable as possible. The conclusions based on the results of the study were (1) there appear to be more positive transfer effects than negative in transitioning from flying aircraft to a simulated inertial control task; (2) the degree to which generalizations can be made from students to pilots depends on the amount of training given the students provided an optimal control/display relationship is used; (3) previously untrained subjects can achieve skill levels comparable to pilots on this type of task, but it takes more trials for the nonpilot to do so; (4) order of part training does not appear to be an important variable in training on this type of task.