A Simple Way to Learn Complex Skills

Sometimes we have to learn very complex skills that can't be broken apart into more basic skills. What do we do then?

0:00 An intro to the experiment
0:21 Skills with many interdependent parts
1:00 The study that explored learning complex skills
2:33 The results
3:48 Try it out

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*There was a wrinkle to this study that I didn't mention, which is that groups 2, 3, and 4 all had a different kind of display on the game for the first six sessions, which gave them slightly different information than the standard game. The idea was to support learner's focus on part of the game, but it also meant that there's more than one difference between the control and the other groups. The enhanced display could explain some of the difference between the control group and the other groups, but doesn't explain the differences between groups 2 and 3 and group 4. And the variable-priority approach (what I call rotating focus) that the study helped establish is well-supported by other studies as well - see the meta-analysis in the reference section for more support.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Starcraft clip from LowkoTV:    • StarCraft 2: AMAZING Grand Finals - D...  

Space Fortress mobile game footage from: https://play.google.com/store/apps/de...

Space Fortress DOS game footage from: https://classicreload.com/space-fortr...

You can play an updated version of the original Space Fortress game at https://www.brainturk.com/space-fortress

REFERENCES

This video is based on the paper below. I replicated their figure 2 starting at around 2:40. Gopher, D., Weil, M., & Siegel, D. (1989). Practice under changing priorities: An approach to the training of complex skills. Acta Psychologica, 71(1–3), 147–177. https://doi.org/10.1016/0001-6918(89)...

Here is a meta-analysis illustrating the efficacy of what I call "rotating focus" but what is called "variable-priority" training in the literature. Wickens, C. D., Hutchins, S., Carolan, T., & Cumming, J. (2013). Effectiveness of Part-Task Training and Increasing-Difficulty Training Strategies: A Meta-Analysis Approach. Human Factors, 55(2), 461–470. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018720812451994

And if you search more articles from Daniel Gopher, you will see other works on the same theme. Like this one: Brickner, M., & Gopher, D. (1981). Improving Time-Sharing Performance by Enhancing Voluntary Control on Processing Resources. TECHNION-ISRAEL INST OF TECH HAIFA CENTER OF HUMAN ENGINEERING AND INDUSTRIAL SAFETY RESEARCH. https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA118...