Schemata training and transfer of an intellectual skill.

Abstract

Advice and feedback pertaining to analogical reasoning were manipulated to produce varying practice conditions for college-age Ss. Following training, Ss were administered a transfer task that was used to identify the transfer of a general or a specific procedural strategy for solving verbal analogies. Both a general transfer effect for verbal analogy solution and a procedural transfer effect for cause-effect relationships were obtained. These transfer effects were observed for both immediate and delayed transfer. Results are discussed within the theoretical context of schema theory (Royer, 1979(Royer, , 1986) and Steinberg's (1985a) componential subtheory of intelligence. Data provide support for a schema-based interpretation of training and transfer within a subset and class of intellectual skills identified as inductive reasoning.

Visual Analogy as a Cognitive Strategy in the Design Process. Expert Versus Novice Performance

“…It was observed that both groups of subjects were able to retrieve deep principles from the available visual sources, and create successful analogies. These findings contrast with Gick and Holyoak (1980), Novick (1988), and Phye (1989) who claimed that novices often have difficulties to spontaneously access, and use relevant analogies. We propose that instructions to use analogy, together with the large collection of within-and between-domain visual displays made available to subjects played a role in this.…”

“…Experience in a certain domain allows the generation of abstract problem representations, and enhances the probability of structural mappings from source to target. Difficulties in the spontaneous access and use of analogy were reported to be associated with the level of expertise in several studies (Gick and Holyoak 1980;Needham and Begg 1981;Phye 1989). Accordingly, novices often fail to recognize how new problems can be viewed in terms of old problems, and are believed to lack sufficient skills to benefit from explicit instructions to use analogy.…”

Strategic transfer: A tool for academic problem solving

“…Aggregates of traces acting in concert at the time of retrieval represent the category as a whole (Hintzman, 1986). Schema abstraction in a multiple-trace memory model would account for the on-line transfer of procedural and strategic knowledge (Phye, 1989) during acquisition as well as results obtained with memory-based processing (Phye, 1990(Phye, , 1991. The schema-abstraction model reflects the relative emphasis placed on decision making at the time of retrieval in contrast to an emphasis during encoding.…”

“…Alternatively, domains can be defined in terms of the formal nature of processing or procedures required (Kolers and Roediger, 1984;Klauer, 1990;Phye, 1989Phye, , 1990). Sternberg's (1985) generativity principle has been employed (Phye, 1991;Phye and Sanders, 1992a,b) to define problem domains based on the type of strategy processing required for problem solution.…”

“…The primary purpose for this review is to demonstrate a need to integrate methods and findings from both areas, in the quest to better understand the transfer process in problem-solving situations. An example of an integration effort in terms of a training-for-transfer paradigm (Phye, 1989(Phye, , 1990(Phye, , 1991Phye and Sanders, 1992b) is also presented (see Fig. 1).…”