Role of Content Domain, Logic Training, and IQ in Rule Acquisition and Transfer

Abstract

Four experiments were conducted to examine the hypothesis that when incorrect strategies for solving domain-specific problems were contradicted, a domain-general rule would be induced and would subsequently facilitate transfer to problems outside of the original domain. Experiments involved examining transfer from problems designed to elicit the "permission" and the "causal" schemata described by P. W. Cheng and K. J. Holyoak (1985). Results indicated that (a) training might have led to the construction of a domain-independent rule only when source problems were causal, (b) transfer was more likely when source problems were causal than when source problems were permissions, and (c) transfer from causal problems was weakly related to IQ, whereas transfer from permissions was strongly related to IQ. The facilitative effects of domain-independent rules on spontaneous transfer are discussed.