Retention and reacquisition of military skills

The Army trains thousands of tasks, often months before they are needed. But a century of memory research tells us that soldiers will lose much between acquisition and utilization. This report, voted best paper presented to the working group on Analytic Support to Training at the 67th MORSS (1999), reviews what is known about the forgetting of military tasks. It presents a meta-analytic review of practical research by many scientists at military and academic laboratories, followed by recent studies by the authors on reacquiring skills once they are lost. This work was done for the Army's Training and Doctrine Command.