Learning complex skills is driven by reinforcement, which facilitates both online within-session gains and retention of the acquired skills. Yet, in ecologically relevant situations, skills are often acquired when mapping between actions and rewarding outcomes is unknown to the learning agent, resulting in reinforcement schedules of a stochastic…

Through repeated practice under conditions similar to those in real-world settings, simulator training prepares an individual to maintain effective performance under stressful work conditions. Interfaces offering high fidelity and immersion can more closely reproduce real-world experiences and are generally believed to result in better learning…

Undergraduates given accurate instructions pressed keys for token points under either a variety of reinforcement schedules (variety training) or under a single schedule. Response rates on a fixed-interval (FI) test schedule then were assessed. Experiment 1 compared variety training inclusive of FI-optimal rates (functional) to training excluding…

Examined influence of 2 training methods on self-efficacy and performance during training for innovative problem solving. Data from 59 managers revealed that training method composed of cognitive modeling with practice and reinforcement generated significantly higher participant self-efficacy than method involving lecture and practice alone.…