| Sumario: | Humans segment naturalistic actions into meaningful units. These are hierarchically organized: multiple fine events are part of a coarse event. We investigated how repeated practice of a virtual sequential assembly task influences learning of coarse and fine assembly steps. In Experiment 1, participants (N = 10) parsed the task into coarse and fine events. This determined the task's hierarchical structure. In Experiment 2, domain experts (N = 18) and novices (N = 19) practiced the task in a virtual environment three times with intermittent memory testing. We found a hierarchical level effect: memory improved with repeated virtual training for coarse but not for fine steps. Further, experts' memory for fine assembly steps was higher compared with novices' memory. The hierarchical level effect could be explained by higher saliency (and lower similarity, respectively) of the coarse compared with the fine steps. We discuss implications for virtual training, which compose of hierarchical structure into task presentation. Lay Description: What is already known about this topic?: Virtual trainings offer a safe environment for repeated practice in which learners can handle challenging activities.Changes in the working life (e.g., "industry 4.0") require workers to learn new dynamic tasks quickly.Humans perceive dynamic tasks in terms of coarse and fine events, these are hierarchically structured. What this paper adds?: Repeated virtual training improves memory for coarse but not fine events.Domain experts recognize fine events more successfully than novices. Implications for practice and/or policy?: Virtual trainings considering the underlying event structure are useful for training dynamic assembly tasks.Knowledge tests of virtual trainings should be based on the event structure.
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