An experimental investigation of the Impact of teaching on psychomotor task performance

Abstract

Training psychomotor procedural skills in organizations is an important task that typically includes lectures, demonstrations, discussion, and on-the-job training. Trainees might also benefit from teaching others what is learned during training. Research on learning by teaching is typically limited to academic settings; however, teaching about material may enhance the effectiveness of the controlled processing phase of skill acquisition. Enhanced effectiveness might come from increases in effort, social interaction, and expectancy effects. Experimental methods with a repeated measures design were used to compare time spent practicing an assembly task to time spent teaching about an assembly task. Results from this study indicated that there were no measurable differences in performance between those who spent time practicing the task and those who taught confederates about the task. Further studies are suggested to explore the lack of evidence for or against the research question.