TRAINING 



505 



the job to which he is assigned, and the man 

 who will rate him. But perhaps emerging 

 techniques can predict that he will (for ex- 

 ample) "offer many original and useful sug- 

 gestions to a friendly commanding officer, 

 provided he does not have to take responsi- 

 bility himself for deciding whether to adopt 

 them." Qualitative criteria permit validat- 

 ing such predictions. Research on how to 

 obtain and how to utilize qualitative criteria 

 is required, since they fall outside the statis- 

 tical tradition of previous research. 



Training 

 Organization of Training 



The general plan for training is frequently 

 dictated by military convenience rather than 

 by psychological factors. Even decisions to 

 train or not to train men for a particular 

 duty have been made without evidence. 

 Wartime research often showed that needed 

 training was not being provided because it 

 was assumed that all men could do a job. 

 For examples, see studies of night lookouts 

 (58, pp. 63-78) and voice communication 

 (58, pp. 98-105). Additional training often 

 raises efficiency more cheaply than redesign 

 of equipment. Research will show what 

 skills can be improved by training. 



Investigation of the overall organization 

 of training is desirable, in order to consider 

 such questions as the appropriate sequence 

 of courses for particular duties . An example 

 of such research led to a finding that men 

 with navigator training learn in 35 hours 

 radar bombardment techniques that other 

 men require 85 hours to learn (56). 



Another such question relates to the length 

 of the training course. Whether five weeks 

 or twelve are allowed to teach a specialty is 

 largely a matter of chance, plus the ability 

 of officers in different schools to present 

 effective argimients. There is next to no 

 evidence comparing the effectiveness of the 

 best possible six-week course and the best 

 possible eight-week course for gimners, and 

 so on. One study of radar observers (bom- 



bardier) showed that 150 hours of additional 

 careful training cut circular bombing error 

 nearly in half (58, p. 18); but another study 

 with Norden bombsights showed that, in a 

 25-mission training program, men gained 

 nothing after the third mission (16, pp. 166- 

 169). Such studies of various skills are 

 indispensable to a rational plan which 

 will provide each man with all the training 

 he can profit from, without wasting his 

 time in training exercises which produce 

 no gain. 



Refresher training has also rarely been 

 organized systematically. It has been es- 

 tablished repeatedly that men lose skills they 

 do not practice. If a man operating sound 

 gear has no opportunity to practice detec- 

 tion of mines, his skill may be below standard 

 when it is needed. Refresher training is 

 often given, but without any systematic 

 basis. The man sent to school is the man 

 whom the ship can spare, or who requests 

 schooling; the man the ship relies on may not 

 be sent. When an ASW vessel puts into 

 port and operates for a few days with a 

 "tame" submarine, the drills may be conned 

 by a junior officer. When the ship puts to 

 sea and makes a real contact, the command- 

 ing officer who skipped the refresher training 

 often takes over the conn. The design of 

 effective refresher training requires systema- 

 tic study and trial. Where research would 

 help is in development of evaluative pro- 

 cedures which could be applied to every man 

 periodically to prove that his skills are in- 

 tact. Such tests could be made at any shore 

 installation, much as the CAA requires per- 

 iodic tests of pilots. Ideally, a man would 

 be permitted to perform a duty only if his 

 most recent tests showed him to be fully 

 qualified. The design of the best refresher 

 training is itself a problem for research; 

 the psychology of learning has developed 

 much knowledge of how men learn new tasks, 

 but very little of how they relearn what is 

 partly forgotten. 



A third program requiring extensive analy- 

 sis is shipboard training. Partly this is a 

 question of designing good devices (manuals, 



