The Acquisition of Procedures from Text. A Production-System Analysis of Transfer of Training.
Abstract
The current theory of cognitive skill describes knowledge of procedures in terms of a production rule representation which is constructed on the basis of an initial declarative (prepositional) representation. In these terms, learning a procedure from written instructions consists of converting the propositional content of the written material into production rules. This process was studied in a transfer of training experiment. Subjects learned from step-to-step instructions a series of related procedures for operating a simple device, with the major manipulation being the order of learning the procedures. Very strong transfer effects were obtained, which could be predicted very well by a simple model of transfer. Individual production rules can be transferred, or re-used in the representation of a procedure if they appeared in a previously learned procedure, meaning that learning time is mostly a function of the number of completely new production rules that must be acquired. Examination of the time required to read individual instruction steps suggests, however, that this transfer mechanism involves processes acting on declarative propositional representatives of the production rules. This means that the transfer process is more similar to comprehension processes rather than conventional practice mechanisms, or Anderson's (1982) learning principles. (Author)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 29, 1985
- Accession Number
- ADA151029
Entities
People
- D. E. Kieras
- S. Bovair
Organizations
- University of Michigan