Problem Solving Performance of First Semester Maintenance Trainees in Two Fault Diagnosis Tasks

Forty-eight first semester trainees in an FAA certificate program participated in an experimental study of trouble-shooting of two different types of graphically displayed networks. The effects of network size, redundancy, feedback, computer aiding, and training were considered. It was found that performance degraded as network size increased, degraded as the level of feedback was reduced, improved with the use of computer aiding, and that skills developed with computer aiding in one task were transferred to the other task.