{"pk":33010,"title":"Goal Speciflcity in Hypothesis Testing and Problem Solving","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Theories of skill acquisition have made radically different predictions about the role of means-ends analysis in acquiring general rules that promote effective transfer to new problems. Under one view, means-ends analysis is assumed to provide the basis for efficient knowledge compilation (Anderson, 1987), whereas under the alternative view means-ends analysis is believed to disrupt rule induction (Sweller, 1988). We suggest that in the absence of a specific goal people are more likely to use a rule-induction learning strategy, whereas providing a speciflc goal fosters use of means ends analysis, which is a non-rule-induction strategy. We performed an experiment to investigate the impact of goal specificity and systematicity of rule-induction strategies in learning and transfer within a complex dynamic system. Subjects who were provided with a specific goal were able to solve the initial problem, but were impaired on a transfer test using a similar problem with a different goal, relative to subjects who were encouraged to use a systematic rule-induction strategy to freely explore the problem space. Our results support Sweller's proposal that means-ends analysis leads to specific knowledge of an isolated solution path, but docs not provide an effective method for learning the overall structure of a problem space.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[],"section":"Refereed Papers","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2mm4k9jx","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Regina","middle_name":"","last_name":"Vollmeyer","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of California","department":""},{"first_name":"Keith","middle_name":"J.","last_name":"Holyoak","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of California","department":""},{"first_name":"Bruce","middle_name":"D.","last_name":"Burns","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of California","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"1994-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/33010/galley/24071/download/"}]}