PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE
—
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. Enhancing Human Performance
pose directions for further study. That meeting, sched-
uled for 45 minutes but lasting 3 hours and 45 minutes,
was an exceptionally successful event. Thurman’s ideas
about follow-on ARI research projects were many and
in knowledgeable and authoritative detail. He wanted the
committee to continue and gave
it a new charter: rather
than evaluating others’ solutions to soldier-performance
problems, it could choose from a list of general problems
that the army would generate and develop its own pro-
posed approaches. He was impressed, for example, that
academic psychology had insights into training for skill
retention instead of merely for rapid acquisition. And he
offered to arrange the classroom and field resources re-
quired for tests of concepts and evaluation of larger-scale
applications. General Thurman’s comment about the
generally skeptical or negative evaluation by the commit-
tee of several enhancement techniques, some of which he
had personally considered seriously, was “I was listening
to my gurus of the time and
1 was wrong.”
CONTINUING COMMITTEE ACTIVITIES
The second major phase of the committee’s activities
is now underway. A newly constituted committee met in
July 1989 to put the final touches on an agenda that took
shape over the
19 months that followed the release of
Enhancing Human Performance .
6 A second meeting at
General Thurman’s headquarters in April 1989 was espe-
cially important in defining the committee’s new tasks.
The meeting was hosted by Lieutenant General John
Crosby, who has assisted General Thurman and the com-
mittee throughout
its
existence; the presentations
fo-
cused on current uses of self-assessment and other ap-
proaches to individual development in the army, on the
problems in maintaining high performance in situations of
high stress and high risk, and on the problem of detecting
deception. Subcommittees were appointed to consider
the following problem areas.
Long-term retention of skills and knowledge
Skills and knowledge gained in army instructional pro-
grams are often exercised often a year later. Therefore,
the committee
will examine procedures
thcJt appear to
slow the acquisition rate initially but may be optimal for
long-term, post-training effectiveness. Included, for ex-
6. Five new members were added to the committee to bolster
its
expertise in the new problem areas on its agenda. Michelene Chi, Rob-
ert Christina, James Davis, Eric Eich, and Francis Pirozzolo joined
seven members of the
original committee (Bjork, Davison, Hyman,
Landers, Porter, Singer, and Thompson), whose expertise remains ap-
propriate to the committee’s new tasks and who were willing to con-
tinue on the committee through the next phase. Bjork replaced Swets as
committee
chair, Druckman remains as
study
director, and Judith
Orasanu
is now the committee’s liaison with ARI.
ample,
are spacing of repetitions during
practice,
r
stricted feedback on
the execution of motor
skin
(Schmidt, Young, Swinnen, & Shapiro,
1989), and ^
quiring the learner to perform under conditions of
te
stricted sensory input.
Training to optimize performance in special
emotional, physical, and environmental states
Procedures that optimize the initial rate of acquisitj0
are unlikely to be optimal
in terms of improving
performance under conditions of stress and/or restrict^
information. Recent research on
state dependencies
j*
memory (body states, mood
states, and environment^
contexts) may have implications for training (Bjork a
Richardson-Klavehn,
1989;
Eich,
1989;
Smith,
1988)
Training techniques designed in sports psychology to e„!
hance performance under pressure may have
impli^.
tions for army training programs.
Cognitive-motor preparation to perform
under pressure
Beyond such training issues having to do with the ac-
!
quisition of a skill, there are issues related to performing;
at the level one is capable of when
it matters. There are
indications that certain preparation
strategies
(such
as
j
mental rehearsal, or automating pre-performance motor
|
routines) may prime or stabilize the cognitive motor pro.
i
grams that underlie skilled performance. Such strategies
!
may help to induce or maintain bodily
states
that
are!
correlated with high performance; recent psychophysio-
j
logical studies suggest that certain patterns of heart-rate
!
and EEG changes in the few seconds prior to the execu-'
i
tion of a critical shot or stroke
(in golf or archery) are j'
correlated with better performance (Landers,
personal
communication).
Models of expert performance
The potential of modelling experts was suggested by
the committee’s prior review of neurolinguistic program-
ming (NLP), by research developments, and by develop-
ments in sports training. In its otherwise fairly negative
evaluation of NLP, the committee found promise in the
importance NLP attributes to decoding an expert’s be-
havior as a guide to training the beginner. Research on
the nature of expertise has flourished
in recent
years
(Chi, Glaser, & Farr, 1988) and may provide a foundation
for training/performance programs.
In
addition,
com-
puter-aided representations of skilled performance have
apparently been used with some success in sports psy-
chology.
“Subliminal” methods to enhance mental states
As part of recent research activity employing a variety
of non-traditional measures of memory (see the
earlier
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