The ability to generalize previous knowledge to new contexts is a key aspect of human cognition and relational learning. A well-known learning maxim is that breadth of training predicts "breadth of training predicts breadth of transfer." When examples vary in their surface features, this provides evidence that only the common relational…

In the discussion on what players learn from digital games, there are two major camps in clear opposition to each other. As one side picks up on negative elements found in games the other side focuses on positive aspects. While the agendas differ, the basic arguments still depart from a shared logic: that engagement in game-related activities…

As transfer researchers have begun to investigate a broader range of phenomena, they have correspondingly put forward new processes to provide explanatory accounts for the occurrence of transfer. This move coincides with a call to acknowledge the contribution of social interactions, language, cultural artifacts, and normed practices to the…

Neural changes related to the learning of the pronunciation of Chinese characters in English speakers were examined using fMRI. We examined the item-specific learning effects for trained characters and the generalization of phonetic knowledge to novel transfer characters that shared a phonetic radical (part of a character that gives a clue to the…

Research indicates that people do not spontaneously transfer prior clues to solve problems, even though the necessary information is available in memory. To investigate the effects of the symmetry between clue statements and problem statements on problem solving performance, subjects were asked to provide plausible explanations for five…

A developmental model of mental activity is proposed, describing central processing skills that are metaphorical in nature. This metaphorical thinking, in which semantic fields and knowledge domains are juxtaposed to enable individuals to perceive similarities between prior knowledge and unfamiliar situations, enables individuals to develop toward…

This study, with 30 preschool children with specific language impairment (SLI) and 30 controls, found a dissociation between limited learning of training targets (words, affixed forms) and limited bound-morpheme generalization (BMG) performance. Results suggest limited BMG reflects problems not with storage or access of facts but with the…

The booklet describes the efforts planned by the Washington Research Organization (UWRO) to study ways in which generalization of skills may be facilitated by severely retarded individuals. It is explained that activities of UWRO are organized around four major tasks: descriptive and laboratory research; research in natural educational settings;…

The influence of task explanation on strategy transfer was studied. When educable mentally retarded adolescents were trained to rehearse and given a minimal explanation of a directed forgetting task, the majority were found to maintain the strategy on trials identical to rehearsal, but they failed to generalize the strategy in other trials.…

Kindergarten and first grade children were trained to choose the middle-sized stimulus in either a single stimulus set or in each of two nonoverlapping stimulus sets. Findings were reported in terms of the assumption that cognitive processes are important in the intermediate-sized transposition paradigm. (Author/DB)

A potential cause for children's failure to transfer learning strategies was explored. Subjects were 68 first, third, and fifth graders. (MP)

When taught to link sorting to self-instruction ("I'm looking for blue triangles") children show perfect accuracy in sorting. This study investigated if this performance would generalize to new stimuli. One participant showed near-perfect generalization to all new stimulus sets (shapes, letters, pictures); two had difficulty with…

This study addressed the problem of promoting generalization of knowledge in people with mental handicaps, by presenting an approach based on the idea that certain cognitive representations of strategies and related concepts are common to solving a wide variety of problems. The surface context of these problems may vary considerably, but all will…

The effects of negative instances on the acquisition of the mathematical concepts of commutativity and associativity were examined. Also investigated were possible transfer effects that might result from the use of negative instances. For 64 ninth-grade subjects, results favored the treatments containing mixed instances and supported the transfer…

Under the National Curriculum in the United Kingdom, children with learning difficulties will need to use transfer skills for various cross-curricular themes. To promote transfer, the use of cognitive strategies is recommended, including perceived similarity, analysis of the learning context, expert scaffolding, and detailed planning of practice…