Transfer and Problem Solving

CHAPTER 13: Transfer & Problem Solving Vocabulary * Transfer: When something you learn in one situation affects how you learn or perform in another situation. * Problem Solving: Knowledge and skills you have previously learned to solve a problem. * Positive Transfer: When learning in one situation facilitates learning or performance in another situation. * Negative Transfer: When something learned in one situation hinders a person’s ability to learn or perform in a second situation. * Vertical Transfer: A learner acquires new knowledge or skills by building on more basic information and procedures. * Lateral Transfer: When knowledge of the first topic is not essential to learning the second one but is helpful in learning it just the same. * Near Transfer: Involves situations or problems that are similar in both superficial characteristics and underlying relationships. * Far Transfer: Involves two situations that are similar in one or more underlying relationships but different in their surface features. * Specific Transfer: When the original learning task and the transfer task overlap in some way. * General Transfer: When the original task and the transfer task are both different in content and structure. * Formal Discipline: Exercising the mind to learn more quickly and deal with new situations more effectively. * Goal: The desired end state – what a problem solution will hopefully accomplish * Givens: Pieces of information that are provided when a problem is presented. * Operations: Actions that can be performed to approach or reach the goal. * Well-Defined Problem: One for which the desired end result is clearly stated, all of the necessary information is readily available, and a particular sequence of operations will (if properly executed) lead to a correct solution. * Ill-Defined Problem: One in which the goal is ambiguous, some essential information is lacking, and no guaranteed means of