Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Two views of problem solving procedure generalization are compared in an experiment: the Generalization by Applying Examples (GenApp) and Generalization by Studying Examples (GenStudy) views. The results suggest that learners can acquire a sufficiently general approach for solving novel problems by studying appropriately-designed examples that encourage one to form subgoals to represent a solution procedure. Learners who are led to form a more rote procedure show much less transfer. No evidence was found for generalization through application.