The Effect of Feedback Specificity in a Virtual Training Environment

Feedback clearly contributes to performance improvement; however, the most effective ways to provide feedback in virtual training environments has not been established. In the present experiment we investigated the effect of feedback specificity. Participants practiced applying search procedures during multiple search missions in a virtual environment. All conditions received a performance score after each mission. The control group received no additional feedback, whereas the detailed group received feedback at the enabling learning objective level, and the general feedback group received feedback at the terminal learning objective level. The detailed group showed the most rapid performance improvement; however, participants in the general group showed equally rapid acquisition if they consulted supplementary materials two or three times. Those who did not performed no better than the control condition. The results suggest that easily accessible detailed feedback produces faster acquisition, compared to when the same information is less easy to access.