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After-event reviews: drawing lessons from successful and failed experience
1Leon Recanati Graduate School of Business Administration, Tel Aviv University, Israel. sellis@post.tau.ac.il
The Journal of Applied Psychology
|September 16, 2005
Summary
Reviewing both successes and failures after training significantly improves performance. This debriefing method enhances learning from experience, closing the knowledge gap between understanding failures and successes.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Military Training and Education
- Learning Sciences
Background:
- Drawing lessons from failures is often considered more advantageous than learning from successes.
- The impact of comprehensive after-event reviews, encompassing both successes and failures, on performance and mental models is not fully understood.
- Previous research suggests mental models of failures are initially richer than those of successes.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether comprehensive after-event reviews reduce the perceived advantage of learning from failures over successes.
- To examine the effect of debriefing on both successes and failures versus failures only on performance in a training context.
- To analyze the impact of different debriefing strategies on the richness of mental models related to successful and failed events.
Main Methods:
- A quasi-field experiment was conducted with soldiers performing successive navigation exercises.
- Participants were divided into two groups: one received debriefing on both failures and successes, while the other reviewed only failures after each training day.
- Mental models of successful and failed events were assessed before and during the training period.
Main Results:
- Soldiers who were debriefed on both failures and successes showed significantly improved performance compared to those who reviewed only failures.
- Initially, mental models for failed events were more detailed (richer in constructs and links) than for successful events in both groups.
- The performance improvement in the comprehensive review group led to a gradual closure of the gap in mental model richness between successes and failures.
Conclusions:
- Comprehensive after-event reviews, including both successes and failures, enhance learning and performance more effectively than reviewing failures alone.
- This debriefing approach can mitigate the initial advantage of learning from failures by fostering more robust mental models for successes.
- The findings support the integration of balanced feedback in training programs to optimize skill acquisition and knowledge development.