Fundamentals of Skill
A. T. Welford
Methuen & Co Ltd
Studies of human performance made during the past twenty-five years have profoundly affected thought and practice in experimental psychology both in the laboratory and in many fields of application. The present volume attempts a broad survey and appraisal of the main ideas which have emerged from this work. In writing it, three points especially have been borne in mind: firstly, although the research surveyed did not aim at establishing a 'grand theory' of human behaviour, certain principles seem to recur in several contexts so that different facets of performance can be linked together more closely than they have been hitherto. Secondly, much of the work has involved mathematical treatments which have been difficult to master for those whose mathematical education, like the author's, stopped at the age of fifteen or sixteen. It was felt to be essential to discuss some of these treatments, but an effort has been made to do so in a way that requires no mathematical knowledge beyond O-level in the British General Certificate of Education together with an elementary course on statistics as usually taken by psychology students. Thirdly, many of the studies surveyed have been of interest not only to psychologists but also to those engaged in various branches of operational research and industrial work study, for whom psychological terms are often a barrier to understanding. Technical terminology has therefore been kept, as far as possible, within the bounds of that which is common to any broad scientific training.