FriSem

Date
Fri May 11th 2018, 3:15 - 4:30pm
Event Sponsor
Department of Psychology
Location
Jordan Hall room 050

Andrew Lampinen, Graduate Student with Jay McClelland, Department of Psychology, Stanford University

Transfer and different kinds of knowledge

We generally come to tasks with a great deal of prior knowledge. How and when can we transfer knowledge of an old task to a new one? For example, under what circumstances does knowing how to play piano make playing guitar easier? What are the relationships between different kinds of knowledge, for example implicit and explicit or procedural and formal? Does being an excellent pianist require knowledge of music theory? Does implicit transfer of knowledge support explicit recognition of the relationship between the transfer domains?

In this talk, I'll describe an experimental paradigm I am developing that provides rich data on these questions. The experiment explores both transfer between tasks and the ramifications for explicit knowledge about the tasks and the relationship between them. I'll describe preliminary data that suggest that transfer can affect both procedural and explicit knowledge about a target task, regardless of the participants' reports of awareness of the relationship between the tasks.