Transfer from Audiovisual Pretraining to a Continuous Perceptual Motor Task

A technique was developed for providing transfer-of-training from a form of audiovisual pretraining to an instrument flight task. The continuous flight task was broken into discrete 'categories of flight.' Each category combined an instrument configuration with a return-to-criterion aircraft control response. Three methods of sequencing categories during pretraining were compared: One group was pretrained by presenting categories in a natural task sequence, a second group was pretrained on categories presented in random order; while a baseline group received no category pretraining. Significant positive transfer was found for both the sequenced and random forms of pretraining relative to the baseline group. Transfer percentages ranged from seven to 48% throughout transfer practice. (Author)