ABSTRACT
Over the past decade, research scientists within the Air Force Research Laboratory’s (AFRL’s) Cognitive Models and Agents branch have been developing and iteratively refining the Predictive Performance Equation (PPE). PPE has been validated across a variety of domains, from simpler laboratory tasks such as paired associate learning to more complex and critical applied domains such as medical skills training. PPE is based on three fundamental findings of the human memory system. First, performance increases with amount of practice—the power law of learning. Second, performance drops with elapsed time since practice occurred—the power law of forgetting. Third, memory and skill retention improves when practice is distributed over time—the spacing effect. These dynamics emerge in PPE through a series of mathematical equations, which are formally documented in recent publications. Here we represent them in a pseudo-equation form for ease of interpretation.
