The Retention and Maintenance of an Information Processing Skill

In the performance of most skilled activities, there are definite limits to the proficiency attainable by an individual. These limits and how they affect the retention and maintenance of a skill are of major interest to performance-- assessment research. While much is known about verbal and motor skill retention, very little research has focused on the long~term retention and maintenance of information processing skills. The purpose of the present investigation was to determine the extent to which the information processing skills involved in a typical choice reaction time (CRT) task are retained and maintained over periods of two to eight weeks. In their initial (Training) session, all subjects were given instructions concerning how to perform the CRT task (which randomly paired eight numerals--the digits two through nine--with eight keypress responses), and then trained for 280 trials. Each subject was then required to return for a session after a rest interval of one day, or two, four, six, or eight weeks. In addition, zero, one, two, or three maintenance sessions followed the test session, spaced at two-week intervals. The data recorded for each session included the subject's reaction times (CRT) and which of the eight possible responses were actually made. The results suggested that information processing performance in a CRT task is detrimentally affected by rest intervals beyond six weeks in length. Furthermore, they indicated that certain aspects of CRT performance (e.g., CRT and information transmission rate) are affected by long rest intervals, whereas other aspects (e.g., error rates) are unaffected. In addition, frequent maintenance sessions were found to be most beneficial in maintaining high levels of performance. A number of important new directions for research were discussed.