Investigating Transfer of Input Device Practice on Psychomotor Performance in an Aviation Selection Test

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Human Factors Engineering
• Motor Learning

Background:

• The Performance Based Measures Battery (PBM) is crucial for U.S. military aviator selection.
• Lack of official practice materials leads candidates to use unofficial simulators.
• Input device familiarity may impact PBM performance.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate transfer of learning from varied input device practice (mouse/keyboard vs. stick/throttle) on the PBM.
• To compare practice effects against a control group receiving only informational training.
• To understand how task characteristics influence learning transfer in psychomotor tests.

Main Methods:

• A between-subjects study involving 152 U.S. Military Academy cadets.
• Participants were assigned to mouse/keyboard practice, stick/throttle practice, or a control group.
• Performance was evaluated on the PBM's psychomotor tasks, including the airplane tracking task (ATT) and vertical tracking task (VTT).

Main Results:

• Practice with either input device improved performance on the two-dimensional airplane tracking task (ATT) compared to the control group.
• The mouse/keyboard group performed significantly worse on the vertical tracking task (VTT) than both the stick/throttle and control groups.
• This indicates a transfer cost associated with practicing the VTT using an alternative input device.

Conclusions:

• Familiarity with the airplane tracking task (ATT) dynamics is more critical than the specific input device for that task.
• Device-specific motor learning significantly impacts performance on simpler tasks like the vertical tracking task (VTT).
• Transfer effects of practice are task-dependent, influenced by task complexity and input device characteristics.