What is transfer of training in learning?

Transfer of training in learning refers to the impact that prior learning has on new learning experiences. It can be positive, where previous knowledge or skills enhance the ability to learn a new task, or negative, where it hinders performance. Zero transfer occurs when prior learning has no impact. Stimulus generalization mediates transfer, and similarity of movement can facilitate transfer, as can the amount of practice or the sequence of events in previous training. The more commonalities that exist between two situations, the greater the amount of predictable transfer. Psychologists study transfer of training to identify fundamental processes, like transposition, and apply them to practical problems.

Why is transfer of training important when we learn new skills?

Transfer of training is important when learning new skills because it examines how learning one skill impacts the acquisition or performance of another. It can be positive, negative, or neutral, depending on whether it helps, hinders, or has no effect on learning a subsequent task. Positive transfer maximizes learning efficiency, while negative transfer can initially impede performance but is usually overcome. The degree of transfer depends on factors, such as similar elements or principles, similarities between stimulus and response, and the amount of prior training. Understanding transfer of training is critical for designing effective training programs and educational strategies.

What is the difference between positive and negative transfer of training?

Transfer of training refers to how learning one skill impacts the acquisition of another. Positive transfer occurs when prior learning helps in acquiring a new skill. For example, simulator training that mimics an airplane cockpit can lead to positive transfer because it reduces the practice needed to achieve a desired skill level. Negative transfer happens when previous learning hinders the acquisition of a new skill. An example of negative transfer is when a person who is used to driving on the right side of the road has trouble driving on the left side. Zero transfer happens when prior learning has no impact on the new skill.

Can you give an example of transfer of training from one activity to another?

Transfer of training refers to how learning one skill impacts the learning or performance of another. This influence can be positive, negative, or neutral. An example of positive transfer is using flight simulators to train pilots. Simulators mimic the cockpit environment, providing preliminary training on instruments and flight procedures. Compared to those without simulator training, students with this experience typically require less practice to achieve the desired skill level in real flight situations because of the behavioral similarities.

How do similar and different tasks affect transfer of training?

Transfer of training between tasks depends on the degree of similarity psychomotor learning . The more similar the tasks, the greater the transfer; as differences increase, transfer decreases. Three types of transfer can occur: * Positive transfer Prior learning facilitates the performance of a new task. * Negative transfer Prior learning hinders the performance of a new task. * Zero transfer Prior learning has no effect on the performance of a new task. The amount of practice, the sequence of events, and the number of common elements or principles in previous training also affect transfer. Transfer effects may be overcome by minimizing the time between training and transfer.

What strategies can help improve the transfer of training in learning environments?

Transfer of training refers to how learning one skill impacts the learning or performance of another. Strategies that maximize positive transfer include ensuring high levels of similarity between the training and transfer situations. The degree and amount of transfer are contingent upon such factors as a number of common elements or principles, stimulus and response similarity, amount of pre-differentiation training, the variety of learning-to-learn experiences, part-to-whole relationships, differences in intertask complexity, use of mnemonic aids, and the extent of proactive or retroactive interference. Transfer effects may be positive, negative, or null.

transfer of training

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transfer of training summary

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Key People:: Robert S. Woodworth

Related Topics:: positive transfer of training; negative transfer of training; paired-associate learning; zero transfer of training; stimulus predifferentiation

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transfer of training

learning

Also known as: cross education, cross-modal learning

Written by

Howard H. Kendler

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History

Kinds of transfer

Basically three kinds of transfer can occur: positive, negative, and zero. The following examples from hypothetical experiments, purposely uncomplicated by distracting detail, illustrate each. Suppose a group of students learn a task, B, in 10 practice sessions. Another group of equivalent students, who previously had learned another task, A, is found to reach the same level of performance on task B in only five practice sessions. Since the average number of practice sessions required to learn B was reduced from 10 to five, transfer of training from task A to task B is said to be positive (10 − 5 = +5). Many successful training aids, such as those that simulate the cockpit of an airplane and that are applied to teach people how to use instruments for flying blind without leaving the ground, produce positive transfer; when students who have preliminary training in such trainers are compared to those who do not, those with preliminary training almost invariably require less practice in achieving the desired level of skill.

Sometimes the effect of transfer of training is to hamper effectiveness in subsequent activity. If after learning task A a group of people need 15 practice sessions to learn task B whereas only 10 sessions are required for those without any previous training in task A, then task A is said to lead to negative transfer of training on task B (10 − 15 = −5). Having learned to drive on the right side of the road often is observed to produce negative transfer for the tourist from Japan or continental Europe or North America when he is travelling in Great Britain, where cars are to be driven on the left-hand side of the road.

The degree to which transfer of training occurs between two different tasks is often minimal and may be so small that it is called zero transfer. If learning task B with or without previous training in task A requires 10 practice sessions, then the amount of transfer from one task to the other is said to be zero (10 − 10 = 0). Learning to knit Argyle socks is apt to produce zero transfer of training in learning to sing an operatic aria in French.

Although in contemporary psychology transfer of training is a distinct topic of investigation with its own experimental designs and procedures for measurement, its implications pervade practically all of psychology, from conditioning to personality development. Ivan P. Pavlov discovered that when a dog is conditioned to salivate in response to a sound wave of 1,000 cycles per second, it will also salivate if it is next exposed to a tone of 900 cycles per second, although typically the volume of saliva will be slightly reduced. In this case, transfer of training occurs between two similar auditory stimuli; in general, phenomena of this sort are called stimulus generalization. At the very root of modern theories of personality development is the assumption that what a person learns during his childhood will show a pervasive degree of transfer to his adult behaviour. In some cases stimulus generalization mediates this transfer. Some cases of excessive fears may have their origins in unpleasant experiences during early life.

Education and transfer

The experimental study of transfer of training has historical roots in problems of educational practice. Educators in Western countries at the end of the 19th century widely endorsed the doctrine of formal discipline, contending that psychological abilities, called “mental faculties” by such philosophers as Thomas Aquinas (1225–74), could be strengthened, like muscles, through exercise. By learning geometry, one was expected to improve his ability to reason; studying Latin was held to “strengthen” the so-called faculty of memory, and so on. Although what contemporary educators have demoted from the doctrine to the theory of formal discipline once seemed reasonable to many, experimental tests have refuted it. When the reasoning abilities of groups of mathematics students in secondary schools were compared with those of other equally talented students who had not had the same mathematical training, no differences in general logical effectiveness were observed between the groups.

An alternative theory of identical elements was proposed in which it was postulated that transfer between activities would take place only if they shared common elements or features. Thus it was predicted that one’s training in addition would transfer to his ability to learn how to multiply. It was reasoned that both tasks share identical features, multiplication basically requiring a series of successive additions, and that both tasks demand the individual’s concentration.

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But the identical-elements formulation soon came under attack when experimental results suggested that one’s understanding of general principles, rather than the presence of identical task elements, has substantial effects on transfer of training. In one notable experiment, two groups of boys practiced throwing darts at a target placed under about a foot of water. Only one group, however, was instructed about the principle that water bends (refracts) light. According to this principle, the apparent position of the target should vary with the depth of the water. When the target depth was reduced to four inches, the group that had been taught the general principle of refraction adjusted rapidly to the change and exhibited substantial positive transfer; the other boys showed comparative difficulty in learning to hit the target at the shallower level.

These formulations (formal discipline, identical elements, and general principles), when considered carefully, might be recognized as points of view rather than as rigorously specified theories that could lead to unequivocal predictions of the results of new experiments in transfer of training. For example, failure to demonstrate positive transfer between mathematical training and general reasoning ability could be attributed to ineffective teaching of mathematics; in such case, the results need not be interpreted as refuting the theory of formal discipline. If the then-traditional manner of teaching mathematics could be changed to emphasize logical thinking (rather than routinized application of formulas), it was argued that perhaps mathematical training could improve reasoning ability in general. Some theorists also suggested that the positive transfer observed to result when boys learned the principle of refraction was consistent with the hypothesis of identical elements; these theorists observed that a general principle may be considered an element common to many tasks. According to this line of reasoning, the group of boys who exhibited positive transfer with the shift to a new target depth shared the principle of refraction as an element in common with the previous task, along with those of aiming and throwing. By contrast, the youngsters who performed without the benefit of knowing about refraction were held to have gained positive transfer from throwing but to have suffered negative transfer as a result of aiming incorrectly.

transfer of training

Kinds of transfer

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Education and transfer