Immediate and delayed transfer of training effects in statistical reasoning.

Memory measures suggest that the retention of training effects is due toMemory for the rule system rather than to memory for the specific details of the example problems, contrary to what would be expected if Ss were using direct analogies to solve the test problems.

Abstract

Ss were trained on the law of large numbers in a given domain through the use of example problems.They were then tested either on that domain or on another domain either immediately or after a 2-week delay.Strong domain independence was found when testing was immediate.This transfer of training was not due simply to Ss' ability to draw direct analogies between problems in the trained domain and in the untrained domain.After the 2-week delay, it was found that (a) there was no decline in performance in the trained domain and (b) although there was a significant decline in performance in the untrained domain, performance was still better than for control Ss.Memory measures suggest that the retention of training effects is due to memory for the rule system rather than to memory for the specific details of the example problems, contrary to what would be expected if Ss were using direct analogies to solve the test problems.Two central questions about the nature of reasoning have been addressed since Plato's time: At what level of generality and abstraction do rules for reasoning exist?and Is it possible to improve people's reasoning abilities?These two questions are intimately related.Plato, and most subsequent thinkers up until the late nineteenth century, believed that people possess very abstract rules and that, as a consequence, it is relatively easy to improve reasoning.According to this perspective, known as formal discipline, rules can be taught in the abstract, in the form of mathematics or logic, and they will then be applied across the concrete domains of everyday life.Psychologists and educators through the nineteenth century explained the process by drawing an analogy between physical and mental training: Just as one could exercise the muscles to obtain stronger muscles, so too could one exercise the reasoning faculties to strengthen them.Twentieth-century psychology has been much less sanguine about the effects of training, partly because there has been substantial resistance to believing that inferential rules exist at a very general or abstract level.In his early studies, which suggested that practice in memorizing poetry did not serve to improve the faculty of memory more generally, William