The Use of Cuing in Training Tasks: Phase 2

Abstract

The report falls into three sections, a review of the literature on training for auditory tasks, an account of three experiments comparing ouing and knowledge of results as training techniques for a detection task, and the comparison of cuing and knowledge of results in an intensity discrimination task.The review of the literature indicates some disagreement on the kind and amount of improvement in simple auditory tasks. Some improvement is undoubtedly due to familiarisation with the mechanics of listening and responding.Some may be due to changes in response criterion and some may be due to a genuine sensitisation to the auditory signals.The variety of techniques and performance measures does not facilitate straight-forward generalisation, although it is reasonably clear that some kindsof training can be effective.Investigating a previous finding that cuing and knowledge of reoults affect response criterion differently, the subjects in a detection task were required to respond with three degrees of confidence.It was found that subjective confidence is not affected by training, but knowledge of results still produced more "risky" behaviour than cuing as defined by the distribution of detections and false positive responses.Investigating the hypothesis that this difference was due to the necessarily higher rate of responding in knowledge of results an experimentally controlled rate of responding reduced the difference but did not eliminate it.A "cuing" procedure with no signal presented atall led to performance similar to that under "genuine" cuing, suggesting that in this task signal distribution is primarily what is learned and not, as had been hypothesized, the nature of the signal.Post-training vigilance performance appeared not to differ for the two techniques.In fact neither group showed significant changes in detection or false positives over a half hour vigilance OOSSirY±.In the third section cuing, knowledge of results and reduced noise were compared in training intensity discrimination.In this case knowledge of results was effective, the other techniques not leading to improvement over five one-hour sessions.As in the detection task, however, cuing and knowledge of results were distinguished by increasing cautinn and increasing confidence respectively following training.Reproduction of this publication in whole or irn pai1: is permitted for any purpose of the United States Government. One of the critical needs of the Navy is to determine the "tr;ainable factors" in sonar and to learn how to optimally conduct such training.This study is the second phase of such an on-going program of oxperimentation. It is concerned primarily with the techniques of cuing and knowledge of results (KR) on a range of auditory detection and discrimination tasks.In the first phase of this program (Annett and Clarkson, 1964), cuing was found to be more effective than KR in an auditory signal detection task. However, in view of the past history of learning theory it seems so unlikely that knowledge of results should turn out to...