Research Overview

The Human Attention and Performance Lab conducts research that has as an overarching objective to understand the moderating influences of skill acquisition (e.g., consistency, task structure, learning requirements, amount of practice) as they relate to models of attention, human performance, and training. The lab activities focus on understanding these influences for younger as well as older adults. Research activities are rather diverse and run the gamut from studies employing basic laboratory visual and memory search procedures to large scale simulation environments involving decision making in Naval combat information centers.

In addition to examining fundamental and practical issues of skill acquisition and transfer, the lab has recently embarked on an aggressive program of research to understand the long term retention of acquired skills. The major aims of that latter research effort include: