ABSTRACT
The past decade has seen increasing use of virtual simulators for operators who need to acquire or practice procedural skills. As part of the effort to close the gap between technological advances in simulator capabilities and theoretical advances in training research, three experimental studies were conducted in order to formulate design guidelines for procedural task training in virtual reality systems. In all three studies, the ultimate goal of the training was assembling by hand a real LEGO® helicopter model requiring 75 steps. Study 1 demonstrated that partly observational learning can enhance training efficiency for procedural tasks without necessarily sacrificing performance if integrated properly within virtual reality training. A closer look at the contribution of cognitive training can be found in Study 2, which demonstrated that the two approaches to virtual training, physical fidelity and cognitive training methods, have complementary advantages. However, cognitive training should be used carefully, as demonstrated in Study 3, since providing enhanced information might make the active integration process more complex.
