Mental Contents in Transfer

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to develop theoretical concepts for mental content-based investigations and explanations in the psychology of human thinking in general and transfer more specifically. The schema-based analysis of transfer postulates that the solving of an earlier problem can influence a person’s future behavior only to the degree of schematic similarity between the primary and the secondary problem solution. The reported content-based investigation, using Duncker’s (1935) classic tumor task, shows however, that the contents of schemata cause an essential variation in a person’s mental representation and judgement of radiation confluence effects. The study identified and assessed in separate experiments the influence of three different thought models (additive, balancing, and distribution-based) and two distinct types of spatial images of rays (compact vs. diverging). Whereas differences in the central tendencies of the judgements could expose some of the priming effects between experimental conditions, the core of the content-based analysis was based on the identification of distinct groups of participants displaying a certain type of judgement. These differences reflected the contrasts between the thought models and the ray image content. They substantiated the claim that a schema-based analysis of transfer and reasoning in general, is alone not sufficient to explain interindividual and intercontextual differences that are based on distinctive mental content in the reasoners’ apperception.