What Determines Whether Observers Recognize Targeted Behaviors in Modeling Displays?

Abstract

Observational learning is based on a critical assumption that trainees can and do recognize critical modeled behaviors. This assumption has been virtually untested in applied settings. We studied the effects of work experience and instructions on the ability of 59 observers to recognize target behaviors in an observational learning paradigm similar to existing ones. Additionally, we investigated the effects of two key factors that were hypothesized to affect the recognition process in observational learning. The results indicated that only observers who had a minimum of work experience (i.e., intermediate and experienced observers in the study) were able to consistently recognize targeted behaviors. Additionally, recognition was influenced by the level of detail of instructions given to the participants. Finally, characteristics of the modeled behaviors greatly affected recognition: Overall, examples of negative behaviors were better recognized than were positive examples. Behaviors whose consequence was shown were also better recognized than those that were neither reinforced nor punished in the video. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for the design of observational learning as a training strategy in complex and applied social learning situations. The applications of this work include the design of training, and the training of evaluators and observers.

Training higher education teachers for instructional design of competency-based education: Product-oriented versus process-oriented worked examples

“…Consistent with this line of reasoning, video observation learning experiments (Jentsch, Bowers, & Salas, 2001) have shown that the recognition of relevant expert behavior requires a minimum level of work experience and that inexperienced people run the change of getting lost in details. In our experiment the teachers did not have any experience with the 4C-ID methodology and might not have been able to distinguish between relevant information and details.…”

Learning to lead: A quasi-experimental test of the interplay between experience and training

“…Thus, a schema constraint acts as the essential limitation. It is likely that this constraint is most pressing for very inexperienced learners (Jentsch et al, 2001). The constraint may quickly lessen as learners construct rudimentary mental schemata, and it may continue to subside with greater experience.…”

“…In practical terms, training is often offered to employees whether or not their individual experiences have prepared them for learning (Taylor, 1998). Over two decades ago, Adler and Clark (1991) suggested that experience and training interact to impact training, but few researchers have taken up the topic since (exceptions are Bapna, Langer, & Mehra, 2013;Jentsch, Bowers, & Salas, 2001).…”

“…The premise is that experience generates a corpus of prior knowledge and skill that allows trainees to better comprehend and integrate the training that is offered (van Gog & Rummel, 2010). Novice trainees are prone to miss important elements from training due to their lack of familiarity (Jentsch et al, 2001;Tuovinen & Sweller, 1999). Greater experience is beneficial only up to a point when other effects begin to operate that suppress its benefits.…”

Virtual Environments for Soldier Training via Editable Demonstrations (VESTED)

“…Of course, failure to find an expected effect could be the result of either an insensitive experimental procedure or the absence of a real effect (or both). Still, in many applications to more complex skills, it is typical to provide modeling of common errors and even to evaluate alternative techniques to insure that the trainee recognizes the displayed erroneous behaviors (e.g., Jentsch, Bowers & Salas, 2001). The lesson for a design tool like VESTED seems to be to provide a mechanism for offering design guidance to an author of a training demonstration with the understanding that some of the relevant research basis for that guidance may be ambiguous, changing over time, and even with individual studies conflicting with one another in some cases, thus requiring the user to resolve the appropriate interpretations of the emerging research picture for each application context while awaiting more complete consensus guidance.…”