ABSTRACT
Many educational, military, and industrial organizations spend much time and many resources in personnel training. Because training is costly, it is important to ensure that it be accomplished as quickly and as efficiently as possible. However, increasing training speed should not be the only consideration. If individuals have successfully learned how to perform a task during training but then forget how to perform it at the time that they need to do so, the training clearly is inadequate. Training also needs to be durable. But even durable training cannot guarantee that learned knowledge and skills will be applied successfully to situations different from those encountered during training. It is, therefore, essential that training also be transferable. It is the aim of our research program to develop principles that optimize separately and in combination the three major aspects of training: (a) its speed, (b) its durability, and (c) its transferability to new situations.
