Interesting points made. In terms of pure instrument flying scans and basic skills, it is my experience that pilots converting for the first time to glass cockpit flight instruments from say a 737-200 have no trouble with basic instrument manual flying handling. After all the EHSI and EADI are just pretty little instruments with fancy colours. Kids "fly" them on their PC's all the time.
Depending largely on the quality of the instruction, the problem as most are aware, is the button pressing part of the job - autopilot, autothrottle, VNav and all those sort of goodies. Many a fine airline pilot has come to grief and been scrubbed not because he does not have the skill to fly the aircraft, but because he needs more time to learn the button pressing routine. If cursed with an unsympathetic or impatient irritable instructor, then it is all downhill from there.
But it certainly is food for thought when results show that pilots going back from years on glass cockpits to basic instrument panels and autopilots, strike trouble with simple instrument flying. One wonders how on earth these crews would cope with a loss of display screens and automatics and having to fall back on manual flying skills on standby ADI/RMI info. With accent on LOFT in cyclic simulator exercises and no serious practice at manual handling on basic flight instruments sans automatics,is it any wonder the aces of the A340 have significant problems coping with basic flying skills when returning to older aircraft.