Physical fidelity versus cognitive fidelity training in procedural skills acquisition

Objective: The current study examined whether training simulators for the acquisition of procedural skills should emphasize physical fidelity or cognitive fidelity of the task.Background: Simulation-based training for acquiring and practicing procedural skills is becoming widely established. Generally speaking, these simulators offer technological sophistication but disregard theory-based design, leaving unanswered the question of what task features should be represented in the simulators. The authors compared real-world training and two alternative virtual trainers, one emphasizing physical fidelity and the other cognitive fidelity of the task.Method: Participants were randomly assigned to one of four training groups in a LEGO assembly task: virtual-physical fidelity, cognitive fidelity, real world, and control. A posttraining test to assess the development of procedural skills was conducted.Results: Both the virtual-physical fidelity and cognitive fidelity training methods produced better performance time than no training at all, as did the real-world training. The cognitive fidelity training was inferior in terms of test time compared to the real-world training, whereas the virtual-physical fidelity training was not. In contrast, only the real-world and the cognitive fidelity groups, and not the virtual-physical fidelity group, required significantly less time than the control group for error correction.Conclusion: The two training methods have complementary advantages.Application: Combining physical fidelity and cognitive training methods can enhance procedural skills acquisition when real-world training is not practicable.