When and where do we apply what we learn?: A taxonomy for far transfer

“Working memory training has positive effects on tasks close to those trained (near-transfer effects rather than far-transfer effects, see Barnett & Ceci, 2002).”

“Transfer is generally easier when the novel context is similar to the context of learning, but several factors have been identified as affecting transfer of FOUNDATIONS OF GAME-BASED LEARNING knowledge (Barnett & Ceci, 2002; Haskell, 2000).”

“Humans also excel at generalizing or transferring generalized knowledge gained in one context to novel, previously unseen domains (Barnett and Ceci, 2002; Holyoak and Thagard, 1997).”

“…and in particular transfer of learning perspective (Thorndike & Woodworth, 1901), we argued that the near-far distinction (Haskell, 2001, Barnett & Ceci, 2002) applied to the two broad types of EET and the differing content and contexts that were required to develop…”

“It must, therefore, be demonstrated that the effects of training transfer to untrained tasks (Barnett & Ceci, 2002; Klingberg, 2010).”

“We also continued to investigate whether there were consistent differences between responses to factual and conceptual questions, and additionally explored whether the note-taking medium affected transfer of learning of conceptual information to other domains (e.g., Barnett & Ceci, 2002).”

“In their review of transfer effects, Barnett and Ceci (2002) made a distinction between near and far transfer.”

“Clearly, the most critical issue, theoretically and practically, is whether or not working memory training produces far-transfer effects (Barnett & Ceci, 2002; Taatgen, 2013), for which our previous review (Melby-Lervåg & Hulme, 2013) failed to find any convincing evidence.”

“…it lasts over time (long-term retention), transfers to new situations that differ from the learning situation along various dimensions (e.g., material content, setting, cf., Barnett & Ceci, 2002; Chen & Klahr, 2008), or accelerates future learning in new situations (Bransford & Schwartz, 1999).”

“This spec-ificity has been seen in every sub-field of psychology that focuses on learning — for example, motor learning [20], expertise [21], memory [22], and education [23] (Figure 1).”

“…to make sense of the enormous transfer literature (spanning at least a century), an operational deWnition of “transfer” has not been widely accepted (Barnett & Ceci, 2002; Klahr, 2005b) and as Kuhn (2005a) notes, “evaluations of transfer depend on one’s conception of the competency that is…”

“Additionally, seemingly diverse contexts may have features in common that promote the transfer of learning and thus generalization of responses across contexts (Barnett & Ceci, 2002; see also van Osselaer, Janiszewski, & Cunha, 2004).”

“…suggest that the transfer effects obtained in the present study do not represent a general effect of transfer no matter the training task (e.g. Barnett & Ceci, 2002; Salomon Please cite this article as: Jaeggi, S.M., et al., The relationship betw for training and transfer, Intelligence…”

“…figures) would be classified as near transfer, but those that Spatial Thinking and STEM Education: When, Why, and How? involved substantially different measures would be classified as farther transfers (see Barnett & Ceci, 2002, for further discussion of the definitions of range of transfer).”

“Typically, however, improvement is specific to the training task (near transfer), and generalization beyond the specific circumstances of the initial learning (far transfer) is rarely seen (Barnett & Ceci, 2002; Fahle, 2009; Polat, 2009).”

“In the literature on transfer of learning, the degree of similarity between the contexts of initial learning and transfer is an important factor in determining whether or not transfer occurs (e.g., Holyoak & Koh, 1987; see Barnett & Ceci, 2002).”

“Do similarities in Barnett and Ceci ’ s (2002) functional context (e.g., using the same mobile application) increase the likelihood of transfer across physical contexts that would be considered far transfer (e.g., from school to the outside world)?”

“Work on knowledge transfer by Barnett and Ceci (2002) as well as by others (e.g., Hinds, Patterson, & Pfeffer, 2001; Klaczynski, 1993; Phye, 1989, 1990) also supports this domain specificity argument.”

“…but as an indicator of a participant’s understanding of the shared deep similarity between superficially dissimilar but abstractly related domains (Barnett & Ceci, 2002; Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 1999; Carraher & Schliemann, 2002; Gentner, 1989; Holyoak, 1984; Novick & Holyoak, 1991;…”

“Barnett and Ceci (2002) proposed a taxonomy for transfer studies, arguing that transfer might be measured on many Note: Values in parentheses are 95% confidence intervals (CI).”

“Barnett and Ceci provide a taxonomy of features that influence transfer learning in humans [5].”

“In addition to neartransfer effects, some evidence for far-transfer effects has also emerged—that is, generalization to domains that are considerably different from the training task (Barnett & Ceci, 2002).”

“Researchers have developed a taxonomy to classify different types of transfers [Gagne et al. 1948; Barnett and Ceci 2002].”

“This notion of generative learning is similar to what has been investigated as the transfer of learning, or the appropriate application of something that has been learned in one situation to a different but related situation (Barnett & Ceci, 2002; Salomon & Perkins, 1989).”

“Several studies have shown that people do not apply their training to unfamiliar and dissimilar domains because they lack the necessary metacognitive strategies to recognize underlying problem structure (for reviews, see Barnett & Ceci, 2002; Reeves & Weisberg, 1994; Willingham, 2008).”

“Presenting these relations as word problems requires learners to apply knowledge learned through enactment in a " real world " gaming context in an formal academic context and hence involve transfer across contexts (Barnett & Ceci, 2002).”

“While near transfer effects are relatively common, it is notoriously difficult to demonstrate far transfer [4,5], where the resemblance between training and transfer domains is much less obvious (e.”

“Because far-transfer effects are very infrequent without substantial overlap in: (i) what is being transferred and (ii) the context in which such transfer will occur (Barnett and Ceci, 2002), the burden of proof should rest on those who claim systematic far-transfer effects from music lessons to cognitive abilities.”

“Although transfer effects depend critically on similarity between the training and transfer contexts (Barnett & Ceci, 2002; Postman, 1971), previous studies of transfer between music lessons and nonmusical skills have focused on domains that are not linked closely to music.”

“In that case, the context becomes strongly and exclusively linked to the mental representation of the behaviour and hence, the context is capable of eliciting the performance of the behaviour directly without conscious intent (see also Barnett & Ceci, 2002; Heckhausen & Beckmann, 1990).”

“The transfer effect also could be classified in terms of a near transfer effect and a far transfer effect [50,51].”

“…can be challenged by limited evidence of the effectiveness of much character education (Berkowitz & Bier, 2004) and limited transfer effects (Barnett & Ceci, 2002) from intervention programs aiming to improve cognition (Melby-Lervåg, Redick, & Hulme, 2016): Even though students may learn…”

“Barnett and Ceci (2002) created a taxonomy with nine dimensions, including categories for types of knowledge and types of transfer situations.”

“Of course, we know that transfer does not just happen [25].”

“If abstracting deep principles that cut across different domains is frequently valuable (see Anderson, Reder, & Simon, 1996 and Barnett & Ceci, 2002 for defenses of this assumption), then it is likewise valuable to find ways to promote this abstraction.”

“(Barnett & Ceci, 2002).”

“Indeed, Barnett and Ceci ( 2002 ) have developed a fairly comprehensive taxonomy of the many ways in which learning and transfer situations may differ from one another.”

“Barnett and Ceci (2002) provided taxonomy of features that influences transfer learning in humans.”

“Far transfer refers to cases in which the two tasks involved are very dissimilar (Barnett & Ceci, 2002).”

“D figures) were coded as near transfer, but substantially different transfer and training tasks were coded as far transfer (Barnett & Ceci, 2002).”

“For example, students who learned standard deviation may be asked to answer a problem that requires a more advanced topic such as normalization (for example, in order to be able to compare apples and oranges; Barnett and Ceci 2002).”

“Transfer of learning occurs when a set of skills acquired in one domain generalizes to other domains (e.g., Barnett & Ceci, 2002).”

“Repetition and adding visual and auditory cues tend to enhance transfer of learning (Barnett & Ceci, 2002; Hayne, 2006), presumably due to an increase in the availability of retrieval cues.”

“…includes features that could be captured in a photograph including where a learning or transfer session is being conducted, when it occurs, and who and what is present (Barnett & Ceci, 2002; Catrambone & Holyoak, 1989; Reeves & Weisberg, 1994; Spencer & Weisberg, 1986; Thorndike, 1903/2009).”

“Minimum Criteria for Claiming Cognitive Abilities Have Been Altered Barnett and Ceci (2002) reviewed the literature on cognitive training and admonished the field that training programs must attempt to clarify the meaning of “transfer of training” to other tasks or situations.”

“…precise circumstances in which transfer obtained and the factors that govern its magnitude. transfer within such studies requires detailed consideration of the level of cognitive overlap between tasks, along with the relative amounts of practice, as well as other dimensions (Barnett & Ceci, 2002 .”

“Near transfer occurs between highly similar contexts and domains, whereas far-transfer occurs between domains that have less in common (Barnett and Ceci, 2002).”

“First, it is important to note that the distinction between what is “far” and what is “near” is commonly a qualitative, rather than quantitative one (Barnett and Ceci 2002).”

“We devised these labs to assess how students apply scientific abilities to unfamiliar physics content in the same functional context (according to the classification by Barnett & Ceci, 2002).”

“According to transfer taxonomy (Barnett and Ceci, 2002), while the physical and functional contexts are different (school vs. playground), the modality of learning and learned procedural skills are similar (hands-on discovery and problem-solving heuristic).”

“Transfer can be relatively near-transfer versus far-transfer (Barnett & Ceci, 2002), and is considered a critical trademark of successful learning (Simon, 1983).”

“Barnett and Ceci (2002) concluded that a century of research on transfer has made little progress to resolving its fundamental questions, whereas Schoenfeld (1999) identified it as one of the major challenges of educational theory in the 21st century.”

“We have chosen these executive sub-functions as they are needed for both academic tasks and learning how to play music or sing (Detterman, 1993; Halpern, 1998; Barnett and Ceci, 2002; Roden et al., 2013; Swaminathan and Schellenberg, 2016; Dumont et al., 2017; Sala and Gobet, 2017).”

“As the content domain of entrepreneurship is complex, each new venture will require entrepreneurs to transfer knowledge across conceptually distant content domains (Barnett and Ceci, 2002; Gick and Holyoak, 1987).”

“Overall, the available evidence suggests that self-explaining worked examples is a sensible instructional procedure to prepare the learners for journal writing, in particular, as transfer effects were repeatedly found, which is usually hard to achieve (e.g., Barnett and Ceci 2002).”

“Although the existence of far transfer was often denied (Barnett & Ceci, 2002; Denning, 2017), several studies provided evidence for far transfer, yet to varying degrees (Bransford & Schwartz, 1999).”

“According to Barnett and Ceci (2002), “much of the financial and human investment in education has been justified on the grounds that formal schooling helps inculcate general skills that transfer beyond the world of academia and thus help students become more productive members of society” (p. 613).”

“…generalizations overly rely on immediately perceptible and salient features while experts are able to use abstract information that has been most reliable in their past experience (Barnett & Ceci, 2002; Gentner & Markman, 1997; Gick & Holyoak, 1983; Newell & Simon, 1972; Opfer & Bulloch, 2007).”

“Individuals may transfer their knowledge and experiences from one behavior change to another if the domains share enough similarities [8].”