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Article Excerpt
INTRODUCTION
Within a number of professional domains, deliberate practice has been strongly linked to improved performance. For example, deliberate practice has been shown to lead to superior performance in music, athletics, reading, coaching, learning, and weather prediction (Ericsson, 1998; Ericsson & Lehmann, 1996; Stewart, Roebber, & Boshart, 1997).
However, if "practice makes perfect," this perfection is quite narrow. Studies have shown that the positive effects of deliberate practice do not extend beyond a professional's domain (see Richman, Gobet, Staszewski, & Simon, 1996). Recently researchers have begun to focus on tasks within the relevant domain that are not often encountered or practiced (Ericsson, 1996, 1998). The key issue is, Do the benefits of deliberate practice create superior performance if part of the task is unpracticed? Examples in which part of the task is unpracticed include diagnosing rare illnesses, responding to unusual environmental disasters, and piloting aircraft in crisis situations. For decision scenarios such as these, shouldn't doctors, civic leaders, and pilots be expected to benefit from deliberate practice within their respective domains?
Our study examined pilot decision making under crisis conditions. First, using total decision effectiveness (both assessment and action selection), we sought to demonstrate that deliberate practice leads to superior decision performance on practiced flying crises, replicating previous studies. Note that our research extends this link to once-in-a-lifetime crisis performances. Next, again using total decision effectiveness, we considered the effects of deliberate practice on decision performance during crisis scenarios that contained unpracticed elements. Finally, disaggregating decision making into two phases, assessment and action, we reexamined the effects of deliberate practice on wholly practiced and part-practiced crises.
Deliberate Practice and Wholly Practiced Scenarios
Deliberate practice is the repeated performance of a particular task where feedback on performance is available and the purpose is to improve performance (Ericsson, Krampe, & Tesch-Romer, 1993). Feedback is manifest in several forms, most notably the organizing of practice around best training methods. Hence feedback can be periodic, such as when instructors design practice activities for students to work on without direct oversight (Ericsson et al., 1993).
Studies have indicated that deliberate practice results in a number of specific benefits. For example, Richman et al. (1996) found that deliberate practice results in automated pattern matching of problems with practiced solutions, knowledge of which cues to sample to diagnose practiced situations quickly, and recall advantages. Klein (1993) found that deliberate practice enhances perception and expectation for specifically practiced situations. Our first research question is, Does the deliberate practice of all elements of a crisis flying scenario lead to improved decision making during an actual in-flight crisis?
Deliberate Practice and Part-Practiced Scenarios
Our second research question focused on the effect of deliberate practice on decision making during partially practiced crisis scenarios. Some research has found that deliberate practice leads to improved performance in new situations within a domain (Ericsson, 1998). For instance, Lehmann and Ericsson (1993) found that practice measures such as accompanying experience and size of accompanying repertoire lead to improvements in sight-reading performance in music. Similarly, in medicine, a doctor's amount of practice may improve diagnostic performance on less-practiced cases (Norman, Trott, Brooks, & Smith, 1994).
Several possibilities have been offered to explain why deliberate practice might create advantages even for scenarios containing at least some unpracticed elements. For example, Ericsson (1996) proposed that cognitive process advantages gained from practice might include enhancement of higher levels of searching and evaluating, an ability to extrapolate beyond the presented data, development of a long-term memory that is richer and more organized, and more effective use of short-term memory. However, previous research has been unable to definitively link deliberate practice and decision performance on partially practiced scenarios. For example, Luchins and Luchins (1959) showed that individuals could be induced to perform inefficiently as a result of successes with specific, practiced solutions.
To better understand the impact of deliberate practice on part-practiced decision scenarios, it is vital to specify which elements of a new scenario are unpracticed. In our study, we define a wholly practiced scenario as one that includes a malfunction that pilots have deliberately practiced in flight or in simulators, in contrast, for part-practiced scenarios the specific aircraft malfunction, occurring within a wider crisis flying scenario, is novel or unique--a malfunction the pilot could not have practiced. For these part-practiced scenarios, every other aspect will have been deliberately practiced--for instance, flying the aircraft, navigating, using radios, working through emergency checklists, task sharing, and explaining the problem and obtaining priority with ground agencies. Our second research question looks at the impact of deliberate practice on decision making for scenarios in which the specific malfunction is unpracticed. Stated more...
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