Propjet:
Many thanks for suggesting the move of the topic to this forum, agreed it is more appropriate.
And also thanks to you (and other contributors) for the excellent and stimulating replies to the query I have modestly put forward here.
Yes, I should have adverted to 'primacy' as that is at the centre of my interest. What I am gnawing at is the principle - at the heart of the MPL concept, for example - that, for fear of reversion under stress to incorrect intitially-learned skills, habits, attitudes, we must therefore train pilots, from almost the beginning, in large, fast, public transport style aircraft (real or simulated). Including, indeed, a specific type and associated rating as part of a pilot's ab initio training. Not to mention sponsoring carrier's SOPs.
We might characterise this approach as 'avoiding the wrong kind of experience', and indeed that idea is explicit in official documentation. Implicit in this approach is an acceptance of the notion, (which you advert to Propjet, though I guess you don't entirely agree with it), that 'retraining' is always going to be less meaningful, to offer less of a guarantee of correct operation and decision making, than 'original training'.
The retrained neural pathways, as it were, will be less profoundly marked out, they will become 'the road less travelled' than the orginal trained pathways, under stress.
If this supposition is correct (and it would be interesting to know, even for those who have problems with that fashionable mental model, if it has any neurobiological validity) the question still remains as to whether it is an immutable part of human make-up. Or could it possibly be because we have paid insufficient attention to retraining principles and methodologies?
That seems an worthwhile consideration to me because I am inclined to believe that most training is 'retraining' in important ways. Virtually any deep human learning involves abandoning raftloads of previously held suppositions. Not least, in aviation, learning those many non-handling-related decision-making skills which are fundamental to the maintenance of safety.
All I am doing here is holding up a little flag on behalf of 'retraining' to garner it some more attention, and perhaps a little more respect. I'm suggesting it's far more prevalent than we might imagine, even when we think we're doing 'original training'.
alf5071h:
Thank you for the reference to that fascinating Orasanu and Martin paper, which teases out some very interesting and germane concepts. I've just skimmed it - now for some bedtime reading!