Laboratory Studies of Skill

  • W. T. Singleton
Chapter
Part of the The study of Real Skills book series (CHBMS)

Abstract

It is one of the principles of skill psychology that man is very much a categorizer and this applies to students of skill as much as to any other skilled activity. To understand and describe the research on skill and on human performance it is necessary to have some structure. The conventional structure is to follow the path of information through the organism and distinguish between inputs, central processing and outputs. It is not possible to do this very neatly and for some topics these distinctions are clearly invalid. To reduce artificial separations this chapter is subdivided into output, input and throughput, thus avoiding the problem of defining the interfaces at which peripheral functions become central functions. There are various phenomena where time is the key variable and so it is necessary to have a fourth category of temporal aspects of skill. Although much of what is described has emerged from laboratory studies it is important to keep these in perspective and some discussion is provided of the limitations of the laboratory based experimental method. In particular the hiatus in progress which has become increasingly obvious over the past decade needs to be recognized and analysed.

Keywords

Secondary Task Memory Span Experimental Psychologist Practical Skill Psychological Refractory Period 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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© MTP Press Limited 1978

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  • W. T. Singleton

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