Improving examples to improve transfer to novel problems

Abstract

People often memorize a set of steps for solving problems when they study worked-out examples in domains such as math and physics without learning what domain-relevant subgoals or subtasks these steps achieve. As a result, they have trouble solving novel problems that contain the same structural elements but require different, lower-level steps. In three experiments, subjects who studied example solutions that emphasized a needed subgoal were more likely to solve novel problems that required a new approach for achieving this subgoal than were subjects who did not learn this subgoal. This result suggests that research aimed at determining the factors that influence subgoal learning may be valuable in improving transfer from examples to novel problems. © 1994 Psychonomic Society, Inc.