ABSTRACT
FOR many years in the history of psychology, skills were treated as if they were of the nature of habits. That is to say it was thought, or at any rate presupposed, that learning to do such things as driving a car, flying an aeroplane, or playing a game of tennis could at bottom be regarded as a process similar to that of learning to run a maze, repeat accurately a piece of verse, or carry out a prescribed sequence of operation on the controls of a machine. That there are similarities between these two kinds of activity is clear. Both kinds have to be learnt, and once they have been learnt, each can be said to be habitual in the sense that there is economy of action, and that there may be little need for close conscious attention on the part of the performer. It is clear, too, that habits, such as running a maze or repeating a verse, offer straightforward opportunities for the investigation of the process of learning. The perfect performance is prescribed and definable, and departures from it may be easily recorded, often in quantitative terms. Skilled behaviour such as tennis-playing, on the other hand, presents more formidable difficulties in this respect. For this reason it was tempting to hope that some understanding of how skills are acquired might be gained by research into habit-formation.
