The Impact of Individual Differences on Message-Production Skill Acquisition

Abstract

Skill acquisition follows a pattern of rapid improvement early on, followed by decreasing performance increments as the skill continues to be practiced, a pattern captured by the “power law of practice,” (P = BNα). The purpose of these studies was to extend previous research by investigating the impact of individual differences on the course of adult communicative-skill acquisition. In Study 1, participants learned a sequence for describing geometric arrays and then executed 90 performance trials. Individual differences in working memory capacity, speed of information processing, and psychomotor ability were assessed. It was found that counter to expectations, speed of information processing was negatively correlated with overall learning rate and that psychomotor ability was related to asymptotic performance. In Study 2, employing a more complex communication task, speed of information processing was positively correlated with learning rate, working memory capacity predicted initial performance speed, and psychomotor ability was associated with asymptotic performance.