Cognitive and social influences in training teams for complex skills

Dyadic training teams save trainer time and resources without reducing a trainee's ability to perform complex tasks alone in research and aviation applications. To investigate this savings, young adults (N = 286) practiced Space Fortress, a complex computer-based research task, in 3 experiments that controlled practice sequencing while contrasting teammates versus individuals, implicit versus explicit instructions to focus attention, and shared versus remote terminals for distance learning. Tests of individual performance indicated that teammates were helpful at shared or remote terminals during practice, and their helpfulness was not mediated by implicit instructions to focus attention. In addition, a trainee's individual test performance (n = 149) was correlated with his or her teammate's reasoning ability. Actions on the monitor seemed to mediate observational learning.