Experience and expertise

Have you ever wondered what makes your experts—your top performers—so effective? What sets them apart from average performers? Experts possess highly organized mental models derived from extensive experience. This enables them to quickly comprehend and solve complex problems (Hoffman et al., 2013).

They excel in two key areas:

• They can handle familiar situations quickly and effortlessly-this is called “automaticity”.
• They are also great at dealing with new or tricky situations- this is called “flexibility.”

This combination forms the foundation of expertise. Experience shapes the mind, developing both automaticity and flexibility by building a large collection of mental models for common situations and teaching how to recognize important details in complex scenarios.

SkillGym’s mission is to create scenarios that empower employees to think and perform at the level of the company’s top achievers

Scenarios Creation

The first step to build your SkillGym scenario is to fill the Brief in.

In SkillGym’s universe, this step is crucial because when you define the scenario’s key elements and your best practice—setting the highest performance level—the role-play will transfer that knowledge to all users through practice.

Methodologically, in the literature, the step number one in creating an accelerated expertise training is the Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA): a broad family of research methods aimed at eliciting, unpacking, and representing knowledge (Klein & Militello, 2001). CTA seeks to understand an expert’s thought processes in great depth to teach them to others. There are over 100 different CTA methods documented in the literature.
While the Brief approach has its roots in CTA methodology, it has been adapted to accommodate the product’s specificities and organizational needs. The resulting method is a proprietary blend of suitable CTA techniques with specific modifications, rather than adhering to any single standardized CTA technique.

SkillGym’s Brief is designed to extract only the strictly necessary information from the client’s Subject Matter Experts. The remaining information needed to create a simulator is then derived by AI using a deductive method. This approach offers several advantages: it facilitates information elicitation from the client, speeds up and simplifies the process, and maintains the integrity of the elicited mental model.

The importance of flexibility

Now, let’s continue exploring the SkillGym method to understand its design and why it is considered highly effective according to the literature. In the discussion about the requirements for rapidized training, Hoffman et al., (2014) use the merge of two theories:

• Cognitive Flexibility Theory (CFT) (Spiro et al., 2013)
• Cognitive Transformation Theory (CTT) (Klein, 1997; Klein & Baxter, 2009).

Cognitive Flexibility Theory is designed for learning in complex knowledge domains. Hence, where there are concepts interacting with high variability, and the need to handle constant novelty. In this theory, authors states that to be able to apply this knowledge from formal instruction to real world cases (which are complex and dynamic), the knowledge must be learnt flexibly. To achieve this goal, there are key principles to respect.

Let’s see how SkillGym applies these aspects:

• Real-world complexity: SkillGym avoids oversimplification by using digital role-plays that mirror real-life situations, including dynamic scenarios and lasting consequences of decisions.
• Case-based learning: The method emphasizes diverse, context-rich examples through a wide range of scenarios, allowing learners to experience skills in various contexts.
• Multiple representations: SkillGym offers different perspectives on the same skills or tasks through its diverse library and expert-created content.
• Interconnected knowledge: The use of Circuits (sets of related scenarios) and Programs (sequences of Circuits) helps learners see connections between concepts and avoid compartmentalization.
• Adaptive knowledge application: By practicing skills across various scenarios, learners develop the ability to flexibly apply their knowledge to new situations.
• Active knowledge construction: The dynamic nature of the role-plays encourages learners to actively build understanding rather than just memorize facts.

Those principles explain where the SkillGym method’s strength lies, and why it is so effective in enabling learners to develop deep, flexible knowledge that can be directly applied in real-world situations.

The importance of feedback

“Learning Must Involve Unlearning”

When someone learns from experience in real-world situations, they need the essential ability to reflect on their own performance—understanding what led to success or failure and why.

Cognitive Transformation Theory (CTT) states that people can revise their belief systems and mental models through experience, particularly when those models prove inadequate. So, thanks to experience people can extend, adjust, reject existing mental models in a continuous process of elaboration and replacement. Therefore, learning also involves “unlearning” and replacement.

In real-world environments, this process takes a considerable amount of time. What if you could speed up this process by providing effective feedback? One way to make this happen is through the “sensemaking”. Sensemaking can be defined as “how people make sense out of their experience in the world”(Klein et al., 2006). It is relevant in Virtual Environment (VE) to help trainees to build more robust mental models (Klein & Baxter, 2009).

Consistently with this theory, SkillGym has a powerful s Sensemaking. Those familiar with SkillGym already know that a significant part of the method is accounted for by what happens after the role-play. After the lifelike interaction, the trainee encounters different types of feedback:

• Eavesdrop feedback: emotional feedback
• Augmented Replay: qualitative feedback
• Analytics: quantitative feedback

The method is built upon a circular interaction that has a clear direction and specific patterns: preparation for the meeting, guided lifelike interaction, self-assessment, emotional feedback from the character, analytical feedback, and numerical feedback. We believe that Sensemaking is, indeed, one of SkillGym’s strengths. The Sensemaking guides the trainee in the understanding of the experience made by the practice during the simulation.

We believe this approach helps trainees maximize their results. They can practice and reflect on their experiences through sensemaking and feedback, and repeat this process, applying new conceptualizations and reinforcing the cognitive abilities just acquired.

How SkillGym works on Minds

What is the mechanism that allows the skills trained by SkillGym to transfer to real-life situations?

Once again, the answer lies in cognitive psychology, particularly Transfer Appropriate Processing (TAP) theory. Developed through over twenty years of research, TAP theory proposes that training is most effective when it recreates the mental processes used in real situations.

While training environments don’t need to perfectly mirror real-world settings, they must engage the same cognitive elements. The key is reinstating specific experiences and practicing critical skills.

We claim that SkillGym allows to synchronize the processes engaged during the simulation and the ones engaged during the real-life performance, and it does it from two different perspective.

SkillGym achieves this synchronization from both: cognitive and emotional perspective.

This approach ensures the validity of the experience, preparing trainees for the full spectrum of challenges they may face in actual situations. By providing a psychologically safe environment for practicing critical scenarios, SkillGym enables a highly effective skill transfer to real-world situation.

Conclusion

SkillGym is a training method rooted in cognitive science, particularly Cognitive Flexibility Theory and Cognitive Transformation Theory. It accelerates expertise development in complex domains through:

1. Expert task analysis to transfer the mental model
2. Case-based scenarios
3. Hint-driven practice
4. Targeted feedback
5. Engaging motivational strategies

By aligning training processes with real-world scenarios, SkillGym maximizes skill transfer, making it a powerful tool for developing complex decision-making and interpersonal skills.

If you want to get deeper

Crandall, B., Klein, G., & Hoffman, R. (2006). Working Minds: A Practitioner’s Guide to Cognitive Task Analysis. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/7304.001.0001

Hoffman, R. R., Ward, P., Feltovich, P. J., DiBello, L., Fiore, S. M., & Andrews, D. H. (2013). Accelerated expertise: Training for high proficiency in a complex world. Psychology press.

Klein, G., & Militello, L. (2001). Some guidelines for conducting a cognitive task analysis. In Advances in Human Performance and Cognitive Engineering Research (Vol. 1). https://doi.org/10.1016/S1479-3601(01)01006-2

Klein, G., & Baxter, H. C. (2009). Cognitive transformation theory: Contrasting cognitive and behavioral learning. The PSI Handbook of Virtual Environments for Training and Education: Developments for the Military and beyond, Vol. 1: Learning, Requirements, and Metrics, November, 50–65.

Spiro, R., Coulson, R., Feltovich, P., & Anderson, D. (2013). Cognitive Flexibility Theory: Advanced Knowledge Acquisition in Ill-Structured Domains. In Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading (pp. 544–557). https://doi.org/10.1598/0710.22

Written By

Elena Ciani

I got a Master’s Degree in “cognitive Neuroscience” which has always been my strongest| passion. After that I postgraduate in “Psychodiagnostic” and I kept developing my interest in emotional neuroscience. In the past years I have been focused on human learning processes and on all the different factors involved in that.

Contact Elena

What is motivation

Motivation can be defined as a psychological construct that acts as a stimulus for action towards a desired goal. Motivation is necessary to initiate and to sustain a certain behavior.

The main points of motivation can be summarized as: the initiation of an action to achieve the goal, an expectation related to the goal and the reward.

It can be divided into two different categories: intrinsic and extrinsic motivation

• Extrinsic motivation refers to doing something because it leads to a separable outcome. The motivation or reason to act that arises from offering attractive environmental incentives and the consequences that are separable from the activity itself, such as offering money, points or a food reward (Deci, Koestner, & Ryan, 1999; Ryan & Deci, 2017).
• Intrinsic motivation refers to doing something because it is inherently interesting or enjoyable; it is required to stretch and extend one’s capacity. It is a naturally occurring inclination toward spontaneous interest when someone is discovering new information, learning something new (curiosity satisfaction) as well as developing and extending existing capacities; mastering an optimal level of challenge.

Intrinsic motivation in learning

The importance of motivation in traditional instructional design practice has been widely discussed in past. According to researchers, the level of motivation is a significant component of learning in any kind of environment, and it is considered a preliminary step.

To maintain a high-level of motivation during the entire learning process is important to provide an appropriate level of challenge combined with a clear and attainable goal.

The learning environment must match each student’s skill level and must provide tasks with clear goals and immediate individual feedback.

“When people are intrinsically motivated to learn, they not only learn more, they also have a more positive experience.” Chan & Ahern (1999)

SkillGym as a motivationally enganged learning experience

The SkillGym team has already described how digital Role Play works (“How Practicing on Digital Role Play Improves Performance: a Case Study“) and which strategies have been used to keep users engaged during the learning process (“Three Case Studies and One Strategy to Keep Users Engaged with Digital Learning“).

Intrinsic motivation emerges out of satisfaction related to curiosity and competence. Considering that SkillGym provides a practical learning environment (where someone actively experiences the interaction) that enables curiosity and competence improvement, we expect SkillGym users to have a high level of intrinsic motivation.

Novelty/challenge seeking and subsequent curiosity/competence satisfaction are the defining characteristics of intrinsic motivation

 

What happens in our brain? Given all the previous observations and conclusions, the brain activity while using SkillGym can be assumed, even though no brain imaging studies have been done yet.

Neural substrates of intrinsic motivation

Neural activity can be assessed while people perform intrinsically motivating tasks by studying event-related functional magnetic resonance images.
The neural system of the function specifically investigated here can be explained in this way.

These studies determined that the neural substrates of intrinsic motivation seem to involve different parts of the brain:

• Anterior Insular Cortex (AIC) activity
• Striatum activity
• AIC and Striatum interactions

The Anterior Insula Cortex is located in the center of the cerebral hemispheres. It is a portion of the cerebral cortex folded deep within the lateral sulcus (the fissure separating the temporal lobe from the parietal and frontal lobes).

Its activation is known typically to be associated with the processes of “subjective feelings from the body” (Craig, 2009; Damasio, 1999; Damasio & Carvalho, 2013).

Specifically, it represents internal bodily needs, and it integrates the bodily information into subjective feelings. Therefore, LEE et al concluded that AIC activity from feelings of intrinsic satisfaction is a key source of intrinsic motivation.

It is also interested to note that, as Davidson R. reports in The emotional life of your brain (2012), high-level of activation of insula are related to a high-level of self-awareness.

Self-awareness is one of Davidson’s six dimensions of emotional style, and it also has a key role in emotional intelligence according to Goleman’s theory. It is thus reasonable to assume that insula activation can be involved in SkillGym users.

The Striatum usually refers to a group of ventral structures: putamen, caudate and nucleus accumbens.

The caudate and putamen are separated by a white matter region called the internal capsule, which is connected to the other two parts by many strands of grey matter.

Striatum is one of the principal components of basal ganglia nuclei and it receives many incoming fibers from the cerebral cortex. The striatum is considered to be involved in different aspects of movement, cognition and behavior.

Because it receives and integrates reward-related information from cortical regions and produces behaviors based on this reward-related information, striatum is thought to be a central part of extrinsically generated motivation.

In addition, recent neuroscience studies have reported that striatum activity during tasks that are suspenseful, challenging, satisfying and interesting (e.g. resolving curiosity, feeling competent) generates intrinsic reward.

AIC-Striatum interactions interactions are well-established anatomical connections between AIC and striatum. These functional connectivity patterns are consistent with many previous neuroscientific findings. LEE et al observed that AIC and striatum activities positively interact during the performance of intrinsically motivating tasks (Cho et al., 2013; Postuma & Dagher, 2006).

Consistent with insula and striatum functions, connectivity between these two structures has been viewed as a functional integration of bodily information and reward-related information during the processes of subjective feelings.

Insular cortex and ventral striatum interactions in goal-oriented actions

Other researchers have viewed the IC and striatum connectivity as the process by which some subjective feelings lead to goal-oriented behaviors (Cho et al., 2013; Damasio & Carvalho, 2013; Naqvi & Bechara, 2009).

The ability to acquire and exert control over reward-related actions is fundamental to encoding the relationship between action and its outcome.

In addition, the subject must evaluate the incentive value of the outcome. This value is not fixed, rather it depends on the needs and desires of the subject.

The current value of the outcomes is retrieved to guide the behavior. Recent findings from studies on rats provide novel evidence that a functional connection between the IC and the nucleus accumbens’s core is required for changes in the value of the instrumental outcome to impact choice between goal-directed actions.

Conclusions

In conclusion, it can be assumed that practicing critical conversations with SkillGym is a motivationally engaging learning task.

Literature backs it up with a neuroscientific explanation. While there are differing views regarding the studies and their limitations, insula, striatum and their interactions seem to be reasonably involved in intrinsic motivation in SkillGym users.

Bibliography

Cho, Y. T., Fromm, S., Guyer, A. E., Detloff, A., Pine, D. S., Fudge, J. L., & Ernst, M. (2013). Nucleus accumbens, thalamus and insula connectivity during incentive anticipation in typical adults and adolescents. NeuroImage, 66, 508–521.

Craig, A. D. (2009). How do you feel—now? The anterior insula and human awareness. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10, 59–70.

Damasio, A. R. (1999). The feeling of what happens: Body and emotion in the making of consciousness. New York: Harcourt.

Damasio, A., & Carvalho, G. B. (2013). The nature of feelings: Evolutionary and neurobiological origins. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 14, 143–152.

Davidson, R. J., & Begley, S. (2012). The emotional life of your brain: How its unique patterns affect the way you think, feel, and live–and how you can change them. New York: Hudson Street Press.

Goleman, Daniel. (1995). Emotional intelligence. New York: Bantam.

Lee, W., Reeve, J. Identifying the neural substrates of intrinsic motivation during task performance. Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci 17, 939–953 (2017)

Mizuno K., Taanaka M., The neural basis of academic achievement motivation

Naqvi, N. H., & Bechara, A. (2009). The hidden island of addiction: The insula. Trends in Neurosciences, 32, 56–67.

Parkes S. L., Bradfield L. A., Balleine B. W. (2015) Interaction of Insular Cortex and Ventral Striatum Mediates the Effect of Incentive Memory on Choice Between Goal-Directed Actions, J Neurosci. 35(16): 6464–6471

Postuma, R. B., & Dagher, A. (2006). Basal ganglia functional connectivity based on a meta-analysis of 126 positron emission tomography and functional magnetic resonance imaging publications. Cerebral Cortex, 16, 1508–1521.

Chan T. S., Ahern T.C., Targeting Motivation—Adapting Flow Theory to Instructional Design (1999) Journal of Educational Computing Research, Volume: 21 issue: 2, page(s): 151-163

WEBOGRAPHY:

https://www.neuroscientificallychallenged.com/blog/know-your-brain-striatum
https://pt.slideshare.net/sorfina/insular-cortex-7598122/3

Written By

Elena Ciani

I got a Master’s Degree in “cognitive Neuroscience” which has always been my strongest| passion. After that I postgraduate in “Psychodiagnostic” and I kept developing my interest in emotional neuroscience. In the past years I have been focused on human learning processes and on all the different factors involved in that.

Contact Elena