Abstract
We examine how cover stories of isomorphic problems affect transfer. Existing models posit that people retain content in problem representations and that similarities and differences between the “undeleted” cover stories might interfere with recognition of structural similarities.We propose that cover stories can affect transfer in another way—by inducing semantic knowledge that modifies problem structures. Two experiments examined how people represent and solve permutation problems dealing with random assignment of elements from one set to elements from another set. Although the problems were structurally isomorphic, cover stories involving different pairs of element sets led subjects to abstract different “interpreted structures.” Problems involving objects and people (e.g., prizes and students) led subjects to abstract an asymmetric structure (“get”) and problems involving similar sets of people (e.g., doctors and doctors) led subjects to abstract a symmetric structure (“pair”). Transfer was mediated by similarities and differences between the interpreted structures of the learned and the novel problems.
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Preparation of this manuscript was supported in part by a grant from the University of Chicago School Mathematics Project. Portions of this research were presented at the 64th Annual Meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, May 1992, Chicago. The experiments formed the basis of the second author’s masters thesis. We want to thank Cecily Cornelius and Denise Nelson for their help in collecting the data and Valerie Chase and Christina Honde for their editorial comments.
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Bassok, M., Olseth, K.L. Judging a book by its cover: Interpretative effects of content on problem-solving transfer. Memory & Cognition 23, 354–367 (1995). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03197236
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03197236