Practice and carryover effects when using small interaction devices.

Area of Science:

• Human-Computer Interaction
• Motor Control
• Cognitive Psychology

Background:

• Modern work increasingly uses interaction devices that can challenge the human motor system.
• Unfamiliar transformations introduced by devices can impact user performance and skill acquisition.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate expert performance and skill differences between experts and novices using small motion- and force-controlled devices.
• To investigate skill transferability and the impact of practice on performance in an applied text-editing task.

Main Methods:

• Comparative analysis of expert and novice performance on text-editing tasks using touchpads and mini-joysticks.
• Assessment of performance differences based on device familiarity and practice duration.

Main Results:

• Experts performed better with familiar devices; touchpad experts showed significant performance costs with mini-joysticks.
• Domain-specific skills were crucial for expert performance and not transferable between devices.
• Novices demonstrated substantial performance improvements with extended practice, particularly with motion-controlled devices (touchpad).

Conclusions:

• Practice effects are underestimated in applied tasks, and domain-specific skill acquisition is critical for expert performance.
• Motion-transformation tasks are generally easier to learn than force-transformation tasks.
• Skill-sensitive training procedures are essential for complex applications and unfamiliar device transformations.