Application of a Multifactor Approach to Transfer of Training Research

A multifactor, multicriterion transfer of training experiment involving a computer-generated horizontal tracking task was conducted to establish relationships among training and transfer scores for manual control of a maneuvering vehicle, to determine the response surfaces for training and transfer, and to demonstrate a new transfer research paradigm that makes economically feasible the simultaneous investigation of the effects of a large number of training-equipment and use variables on transfer to multiple-criterion vehicle configurations. There were 80 experimental participants, 48 of whom were trained and tested on individually unique combinations of training and transfer conditions. This study was the first to measure the training and transfer effects of as many as six training equipment and use factors in a single experiment, to examine as many as 25 training-vehicle configurations in the same experiment, to train a single individual on each of 48 training conditions, to employ multiple (3) transfer vehicle configurations, and to provide data suitable for deriving multiple-regression equations for estimating the transfer effectiveness of configurations not directly studied.