The purpose of the effort was to determine the benefits to be derived from the adaptive training technique of automatically adjusting task difficulty as a function of a student skill during early learning of a complex perceptual motor task. A digital computer provided the task dynamics, scoring, and adaptive control of a second-order, two-axis, compensatory tracking task. Two adaptive training methods were compared: Continuous automatic adjustment of task difficulty during acquisition; and a schedule of increasing levels of fixed difficulty during acquisition training. Comparisons were made between groups on the basis of criterion task and performance during and after acquisition training. Results indicate that acquisition practice under increasing levels of fixed difficulty is significantly superior to practice under conditions of continuous adjustmant of task difficulty. (Author)