Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

We compared types of transfer facilitated by instructions to engage in analogical comparison or self-explanation. Participants received learning materials and worked examples with prompts supporting analogical comparison, selfexplanation, or instructional explanation study. Learners also self-reported their use of analogical comparison and selfexplanation on a series of questionnaires. We evaluated condition effects on self-reports and transfer, and the relations between self-reports and transfer. Receiving materials with analogical-comparison support and reporting greater levels of analogical comparison were both associated with worse transfer performance, while reporting greater levels of selfexplanation was associated with better performance. Learners’ self-reports of analogical comparison and selfexplanation were not related to condition assignment, suggesting that the questionnaires did not measure the same processes promoted by the intervention, or that individual differences are robust even when learners are instructed to engage in analogical comparison or self-explanation