ROLE OF CONTENT DOMAIN, LOGIC TRAINING, AND IQ IN RULE ACQUISITION AND TRANSFER

Four experiments were conducted to examine the hypothesis that when in correct strategies for solving domain-specific problems were contradic ted, a domain-general rule would be induced and would subsequently fac ilitate transfer to problems outside of the original domain. Experimen ts 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 l ed to the construction of a domain-independent rule only when source p roblems were causal, (b) transfer was more likely when source problems were causal than when source problems were permissions, and (c) trans fer from causal problems was weakly related to IQ, whereas transfer fr om permissions was strongly related to IQ. The facilitative effects of domain-independent rules on spontaneous transfer are discussed.