Some Relevant Theory and Findings on Acquisition

Abstract

A major objective of the preceding sections has been to draw from the literature on acquisition curves some indications of where and how military and other applied training can be improved, particularly in the domains of course and segment duration, pacing, scheduling, and other areas that involve decisions about training intervention or termination. Even though the concern is primarily how to improve training procedures, such decisions inevitably impact the effectiveness and the cost of particular training arrangements. We have looked also for regularities and predictabilities in form and rate of acquisition with a view to extracting some recommendations oriented toward those domains, with a passing interest in retention as it relates to acquisition variables. It is possible, from the information in previous sections, to derive a few such recommendations on the basis of empirical outcomes alone. There are some reasonable regularities in the literature with respect to expectations under certain conditions of skill acquisition, but there is still considerable uncertainty about why these regularities occur. The value of recommendations and likely their generalizability would be enhanced by some indications of how they relate to the more theoretical underpinnings of learning and acquisition.