Acta Psych&g& 71 (1989) 2599299 North-Holland 259 zyxwvutsrqponm THE TRAINING OF COMPLEX TASK PERFORMANCE * Monica FA BIA NI, Jean BUCKLEY, Gabriele GRATTON, Michael G.H. COLES and Emanuel DONCHIN University of Illinois, Champaign, USA Robert LOGIE Umm-sity of Aberdeen, UK To establish the rules that govern the effectiveness of part-task training in the learning of complex perceptual-motor tasks such as the ‘Space Fortress’ game. we compared two part-task training regimes with a control training regime based on whole-task practice. In previous research, these part-task training regimes were shown to improve SubJects performance. We compared the rate of learning and the final performance of subjects trained with these regimes, as well as the extent to which the acquired skills were susceptible to interference by a battery of concurrently performed tasks. Thirty-three subjects participated in the study. The quality of subject performance varied with the training regime. The best performance was achieved by subjects trained with the hierarchical approach, which devotes part of the training time to practice on a series of sub-tasks presumed to develop the elements of the subjects’ optimal strategy. Subjects trained with the rntegrated approach were continually exposed to the whole game, while components of the game were emphasized by means of instructions and feedback. These subjects obtained lower scores than did subjects in the hierarchical group, although they were superior to control subjects. However, the resistance to the interference produced by the concurrent tasks was most pronounced for subjects in the integrated group. Thus, part-task training was superior to whole-task training. However, in the choice of training regimes it is important to consider which aspect of performance is to be optimized because robustness to interference in dual-task conditions is not necessarily correlated to higher levels of performance in single-task practice. * A partial report of this study was presented at the In-Progress Review meeting of the U.S. Army Research Institute (ARI), Urbana (IL), March 14-17, 1988. The research described w as supported by AR1 Research Contract #MDA903-86-C-0346. Dr. Michael Kaplan director. We acknowledge the contribution of Jennifer Bridges in the collection of the data, and of Brian Foote in the development of software. We are indebted to Bill Gehring, Earle Heffley, Art Kramer, Andries Sanders, Chris Wickens and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments. Requests for reprints should be sent to E. Donchin, Psychology Department, University of Illinois, 603 East Daniel, Champaign, IL 61820, USA. OtlOl-691X/ 89/ $3.50 0 1989, Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. (North-Holland)