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Abstract:
Abstract: Novel tasks tend to be demanding of attentional
resources. With the development of strategies and skills, some task
components become automatized, and cortical populations inessential
to task performance are deactivated. Recent evidence indicates that
spectral features of the EEG provide sensitive indices of changes
in cortical activation associated with skill acquisition (Smith,
McEvoy, & Gevins, 1999, Cognitive Brain Research 7:389-404).
The current study extends such results to acquisition of skill in a
computer-based flight simulation environment, the NASA
Multi-Attribute Task Battery. This task battery requires parallel
performance of systems monitoring, resource management,
communications, and tracking subtasks. It has been widely employed
in studies of cognitive workload and adaptive automation. Six
subjects performed the flight simulation task over three sessions
conducted a week apart. By the third session performance on several
subtasks had become faster and/or more accurate. These performance
improvements were associated with topographically widespread
changes in spectral features of the EEG. In particular, power in
the alpha band (10-12Hz) increased with practice. Since the
amplitude of the human alpha rhythm increases when neurons in a
population are no longer involved in task-related processing, the
observed practice-related increase in alpha amplitude suggests that
skill-acquisition is associated with a decrease in the proportion
of neural resources recruited by task performance. Supported by the
Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
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