GROUP AND INDIVIDUAL TRAINING - THE IMPACT OF PRACTICE ON PERFORMANCE

Recent reviews suggest that the effectiveness of various training meth ods are contingent on team and individual competencies, msk requiremen ts, and features of the work environment (Baldwin & Ford, 1988; Cannon -Bowers, Tannenbaum, Salas, & Volpe, 1995), Two experiments compared t he effects of task practice-as either individuals or in groups-on subs equent group and individual performance on a complex cognitive task Ex periment 1 examined the effects of task practice on group performance, whereas Experiment,2 examined the effects of task practice on individ ual performance. In both studies, sets of four persons worked as indiv iduals or in groups on two a practice problems before their final perf ormance on a third problem. fn general, the more members practiced as a group, the better they performed as a group. However practicing indi vidually or in groups did rot have a significant effect on individual performance. Future research should address whether these findings are generalizable across training methods, tasks, types of groups, and wo rk environments.