Date of Award
2010
Document Type
Thesis
Publisher
Edith Cowan University
Degree Name
Bachelor of Science Honours
School
School of Psychology and Social Sciences
Faculty
Faculty of Computing, Health and Science
First Supervisor
Craig Speelman
Abstract
This paper was designed to examine the relationship between training and transfer tasks and performance on these tasks whereby training can be used to predict transfer. Previous research has assumed that performance of an established task should extrapolate the power function of learning. That is, performance of an established skill in a new domain will continue to improve at the same rate with practice as if there was no change in the domain. 60 participants were recruited from the University of Edith Cowan and were randomly assigned to one of three conditions; I 0 block condition, 20 block condition, or 30 block condition. Participants were required to complete a dot counting task. The training and transfer phases differed such that the items presented in the transfer phase were also present in the training phase but with additional items. The results revealed that performance of old skills executed in the context of a new task were slower than predicted in the 10 and 30 block condition. These results indicated that a change in the presentation context of a new task affects response time performance on an old task, and extrapolations of the learning curve cannot be applied to predicting transfer performance.
Recommended Citation
Tan, J. A. (2010). The relationship between amount of training and performance on a new task. Edith Cowan University. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses_hons/1244