ABSTRACT
This chapter examines factors that influence the acquisition and transfer of fundamental components of skill. Much of the research described in it was conducted with basic choice reaction tasks, which permit isolation of fundamental cognitive processes and rapid acquisition of skill within a single experimental session (Proctor & Vu, 2006a). The methods relied heavily, though not exclusively, on variants of spatial stimulusresponse compatibility (SRC) tasks. The concept of SRC and the first investigations of compatibility effects are attributed to Paul M. Fitts (Fitts & Deininger, 1954; Fitts & Seeger, 1953), who founded the Psychology Branch of the Aero Medical Laboratory of the U.S. Army at Wright Field at the end of World War II. Perhaps more than anyone, he recognized the value of basic laboratory tasks for understanding processes involved in much more complex military tasks. This value has also been appreciated by other researchers associated with the military who have used SRC tasks in the investigation of human performance issues, including Alluisi and Warm (1990). Thus, the work described in this chapter follows in a tradition of exploiting the properties of SRC tasks to investigate a range of issues in human skilled performance, in this case, ones concerning practice and transfer effects.
