Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

In this paper, we review the literature on the relation between solving nonspecific goal problems and learning. Research has shown that reduced goal-specificity facilitates learning of rules and principles of the target domain. Researchers have accounted for this effect using a cognitive load theory (Sweller, 1988) and a dual space theory of problem solving (Vollmeyer, Bums, & Holyoak, 1996). Other researchers have shown that learning can be both facilitated by nonspecific as well as specific goals and account for their findings using goal appropriateness theory (Miller, Lehman. & Koedinger, 1997). W e judge each theoretical account by evaluating their consistencies with unified theories of cognition and other empirical data. We note the shortcomings of the each theory and incorporate elements of each to explain all the data.