Transfer of learning refers to the influence of previously learned knowledge or skills on the acquisition or performance of new knowledge or skills. Transfer is the ultimate goal of education — we learn in school with the expectation that this learning will be useful in new contexts. Yet research consistently shows that transfer is often limited: people frequently fail to apply what they have learned to new but related situations. Understanding when and why transfer occurs is one of the most important questions in the science of learning.
Key Structures
- Prefrontal cortex — The anterior portion of the frontal lobe, critical for executive functions including planning, decision-making, working memory, and cognitive control.
- Parietal cortex — The cortical region between frontal and occipital lobes, integrating sensory information for spatial representation and attention.
- Domain-specific cortical areas
- Encoding Specificity — Tulving's principle that memory retrieval is most successful when the conditions at retrieval match the conditions that were present during encoding.
Key Functions
- Apply knowledge or skills learned in one context to new, different situations.
- can be positive (facilitating) or negative (interfering).
Types of Transfer
Near transfer involves applying learning to situations very similar to the original learning context (solving math problems similar to those practiced). Far transfer involves applying learning to situations quite different from the original context (using mathematical reasoning to solve everyday financial decisions). Near transfer is relatively common; far transfer is much rarer and harder to achieve. Positive transfer occurs when prior learning facilitates new learning; negative transfer occurs when prior learning interferes with it.
Theories of Transfer
The identical elements theory (Thorndike) proposed that transfer depends on shared elements between old and new tasks — the more elements in common, the more transfer. The transfer-appropriate processing view extends encoding specificity to learning transfer: transfer is best when the processing demands of the new task match those practiced during learning. Analogical transfer occurs when learners recognize the structural similarity between a known problem and a new one, though spontaneous analogical transfer is surprisingly rare without hints.
The difficulty of achieving far transfer has been called the "transfer problem" in education. Students who master principles in one context often fail to apply them in different contexts. Gick and Holyoak (1980) found that most participants who had just read a story illustrating the principle of "converging forces" failed to apply this principle to an analogous problem (Duncker's radiation problem) without being explicitly told to use the story. Enhancing transfer requires explicit instruction in underlying principles, practice across diverse contexts, and metacognitive training in recognizing when previously learned knowledge is relevant.
Disorders
- Reduced transfer in intellectual disability
- Impaired in frontal lobe damage
- Limited in autism spectrum disorder