Staying Sharp: Retention of Military Knowledge and Skills

摘要

This report reviews what is known about forgetting as it applies to military tasks. It includes research conducted by the Army Research Institute as well as related work performed by the Air Force and Navy and leading academic institutions. The report distinguishes the memory for knowledge and skill related to procedural tasks, cognitive tasks, and perceptual-motor tasks. Memory for task knowledge has been demonstrated to be quite good. Memory for cognitive skills has been demonstrated to be quite good. Memory for psychomotor skills varies, depending on whether the task is continuous, such as riding a bicycle, or discrete, such as executing the separate performance steps involved in disassembling a rifle. Throughout the report, figures depict the relative sustainment or decay of a skill as reported in the research literature. A final section concerns the factors that influence the reacquisition of a skill after extended periods of nonuse, as might occur during a mobilization.