Retention and transfer of morse code reception skill by novices: Part-whole training

The training of composite skills requiring differential responding to a lar ge set of stimuli raises issues about how to break down the whole task into parts and which parts should be trained first. Components of Morse code re ception skill were identified, separated, and used to test whether initial training on a difficult part was more effective than initial training on an easy part. Initial training on a difficult subset of stimuli and on a diff icult subtask both yielded disadvantages rather than the advantage implied by recent findings with different tasks. Incremental training should begin with the part yielding the most effective strategic skills, which appear to depend on characteristics of the task. In both present experiments, easy i nitial training led to adoption of an effective unitization strategy for re presenting codes. The hypothesis that procedural reinstatement at delayed t esting leads to better retention was supported and extended.