When and Where Do We Apply What We Learn? A Taxonomy for Far Transfer

Barnett, S. M., & Ceci, S. J. (2002). When and Where Do We Apply What We Learn? A Taxonomy for Far Transfer: A Taxonomy for Far Transfer. Psychological Bulletin, 128(4), 612-637.

Type

Journal article

Intellectual base

Primary research

Year

2002

DOI

10.1037/0033-2909.128.4.612

Link

https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.128.4.612

Cited from

cognitive_science, design_research, psychology

Cited by

5 citations across 5 artifacts.

Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.

Primes

• Encoding Specificity
  • In education, a procedure learned in one context frequently fails to transfer to a structurally identical problem in another, because retrieval cues do not reinstate encoded features — the transfer-of-learning literature reads as engineering against encoding specificity.

    This sourceReviews the transfer-of-learning literature showing procedures learned in one context routinely fail to transfer to structurally identical problems in another.

• Problem Framing
  • Whether that recognition is structural rather than analogical is not established: the transfer literature reports that arguments over whether far transfer occurs have made little progress toward resolution, so the structural reading is this entry's own claim rather than a demonstrated finding.
• Transfer of Learning
  • and systematized in Barnett and Ceci's 2002 taxonomy of transfer distance along nine dimensions.

Mechanisms

• Apprenticeship Rotation
  • … manufacture the illusion of transfer without ever testing it: showing up in three contexts is not the same as proving the reasoning carried, which is why the honest version treats each move as a transfer of learning check, distinguishing near transfer (a similar station) from far transfer (a genuinely new one).

    This sourceDistinguishes near from far transfer by the degree of change across content and context dimensions.

• Generalization Probe
  • It operationalizes transfer of learning: whether a capacity or attitude built in one setting carries to different, untrained conditions, which is never guaranteed and must be tested rather than assumed.

    This sourceTreats transfer as application of learning across changed contexts, with success conditional and empirically assessable.

Verification

This reference passed the adversarial substantiation pipeline: it was checked to exist and to support the claim it is attached to. See how references were verified.

Registry ID ref:7c0b93c988c1 · see in the full table