WHEN IS A KO OK - CAPITALIZING ON EXISTING KNOWLEDGE STRUCTURES TO FACILITATE PRE-TRAINING TRANSFER

Emerging research on training suggests that cognitive and adaptive app roaches to training design can facilitate the ''pre-training transfer' ' of trainees' relevant knowledge and skills to the training context. Little empirical work has tested this notion, in part, because of a we ak theoretical base and inadequately developed testable hypotheses. Th is article reviews instructional and cognitive research and proposes t hat training effectiveness is a function of the correspondence between training treatments (e.g., discovery, remedial, didactic) and the nat ure of the overlap between trainees' pre-training knowledge structures and training's target knowledge structures. We identify 5 different t ypes of overlap that influence the selection, and subsequent effective ness, of training treatments: congruence, unrelatedness, conflict, ove r-generality or over-specificity.