The learning of perceptual-motor skills by men and machines and its relationship to training

As part of a program of research on the feasibility and utility of automated training devices, “teaching machines,” for perceptual-motor skills, a comparative study has been made of human operators and computer-simulated learning-machines learning a high order tracking task under a variety of conditions.One outcome of this study has been to suggest, through the similarity of learning phenomena shown by men and machines, that there are important characteristics of learning which may be divorced from the particular physical realisation of a learning device, and hence are entirely conditioned by the learning environment. This has practical implications for training and for the evaluation of training devices, since a general theory of learning phenomena may be developed and standard learning artifacts may be used in the optimization of training techniques.This paper analyses training as a control problem in the state-space of the adaption-automaton of the trainee, and develops a strategy for training based upon the epistemological problems of the trainee. A specific feedback training controller for a class of tracking skills is then outlined and its behaviour investigated theoretically and experimentally. Finally, a major experiment involving the training of both humans and learning machines under a variety of conditions is described and analysed.