Learning, Forgetting, and Relearning for Keystroke- and Mouse-Driven Tasks: Relearning Is Important

Abstract

We investigate performance change arising through learning, forgetting, and relearning. Participants learned a spreadsheet task with either keystroke-driven (keyboard, n = 30) or mouse-based menu-driven (mouse, n = 30) commands. Their performance confirmed the power law of practice. The keyboard users learned to complete the task faster than the mouse users on the last learning session (Day 4). At a 6-day retention interval, the mouse users were observed to forget more—they took more time to complete the task than the keyboard users. Of interest, the participants in the two modality groups showed no reliable differences in their forgetting under the retention of 12 and 18 days. With additional practice, the mouse group users with the 6-day retention relearned more—they reliably reduced the time to complete the task in comparison to the paired keyboard group. These results help understand why people may choose to use a mouse-driven graphical user interface rather than a keystroke-driven interface: People choosing to use a mouse-based menu-driven interface may not need to use a knowledge-in-the-head strategy but knowledge-in-the-world, and may be doing so because this strategy provides better relearning, rather than because it is faster or easier initially or because it is better for learning or forgetting. These results provide a richer explanation of why menu-driven interfaces (knowledge-in-the-world) are more ubiquitous and suggests when they can be replaced, for example, where use is infrequent but often enough that forgetting does not substantially occur. Our results provide preliminary suggestions for choosing optimal training strategies and supporting these strategies in terms of the three stages of learning and forgetting.

NOTES

Notes

¹ Knowledge compilation is called chunking in the Soar architecture and proceduralization in other theories.

² Most theories, including ACT-R, do not include this as a possibility (Chong, 2004).

³ More information on Dismal and the study booklets that were used by participants can be found at http://acs.ist.psu.edu/dismal/dismal.html.

⁴ C-x indicates holding down the control key while pressing x.

Background. This article is based on the Ph.D. thesis of the first author.

Acknowledgments. Comments from several anonymous reviewers have helped improve this article.

Funding. This research was sponsored by grants from the Division of Human Performance Training, & Education at the Office of Naval Research, under Contracts W911QY-07-01-0004 and N00014-10-1-0401. The views and conclusions contained in this article are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the U.S. Government or the Pennsylvania State University.

HCI Editorial Record. First manuscript received January 15, 2010. Revisions received September 20, 2011, and June 11, 2013. Accepted by Stephen Payne. Final manuscript received June 29, 2013. — Editor

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jong Wook Kim

Jong Wook Kim ([email protected]) is a cognitive scientist with an interest in human–computer interaction and cognitive modeling; he is a Research Scientist at the University of Central Florida.

Frank E. Ritter

Frank E. Ritter ([email protected]) is a cognitive scientist with an interest in human–computer interaction and cognitive modeling; he is a Professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology, and in CSE and Psychology at the Pennsylvania State University.