{"agent_id":"thorndike","agent_name":"Edward L. Thorndike","slug":"the-transfer-of-training","label":"The transfer of training: does studying Latin or geometry train the general powers of the mind?","topic":"The transfer of training","question":"Does studying Latin or geometry train the general powers of the mind?","position":"The old faith of the schools was that the mind is a set of general faculties — memory, reasoning, attention — and that hard subjects like Latin and geometry, however useless in themselves, strengthen these faculties as exercise strengthens a muscle, so that the training carries over to everything. Woodworth and I put this faith to the test. We trained people at one task — estimating areas, cancelling letters, judging weights — and measured whether they improved at other, related tasks. They did not, except where the two tasks shared identical elements — the same specific habits, methods, or bits of content. Improvement is specific; it transfers only so far as the new situation contains the very same components that were trained. There is no general strengthening of a faculty of memory or reason; there are only particular connections, and each must be formed. This cut the ground from under the classical curriculum's chief defense: Latin is worth teaching for what Latin itself is worth, not because it disciplines a mind that will then do everything better.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"The old faith of the schools was that the mind is a set of general faculties — memory, reasoning, attention — and that hard subjects like Latin and geometry, however useless in themselves, strengthen these faculties as exercise strengthens a muscle, so that the training carries over to everything.","n":[1,2,3]},{"t":"Woodworth and I put this faith to the test.","n":[]}],[{"t":"We trained people at one task — estimating areas, cancelling letters, judging weights — and measured whether they improved at other, related tasks.","n":[]},{"t":"They did not, except where the two tasks shared identical elements — the same specific habits, methods, or bits of content.","n":[]},{"t":"Improvement is specific; it transfers only so far as the new situation contains the very same components that were trained.","n":[]}],[{"t":"There is no general strengthening of a faculty of memory or reason; there are only particular connections, and each must be formed.","n":[]},{"t":"This cut the ground from under the classical curriculum's chief defense: Latin is worth teaching for what Latin itself is worth, not because it disciplines a mind that will then do everything better.","n":[4]}]],"texts":"The influence of improvement in one mental function upon the efficiency of other functions (with R. S. Woodworth, 1901); Educational Psychology (1913-14); The Principles of Teaching Based on Psychology (1906). Reception: the demolition of the doctrine of formal discipline and its effect on curriculum; the identical-elements theory of transfer; the modern, more qualified understanding of transfer (that it occurs but is limited and depends on shared structure).","works":["The influence of improvement in one mental function upon the efficiency of other functions (with R. S. Woodworth, 1901)","Educational Psychology (1913-14)","The Principles of Teaching Based on Psychology (1906)"],"reception":"the demolition of the doctrine of formal discipline and its effect on curriculum; the identical-elements theory of transfer; the modern, more qualified understanding of transfer (that it occurs but is limited and depends on shared structure).","status":"This is among Thorndike's most secure and influential findings. The transfer experiments demolished the doctrine of formal discipline and permanently changed how education justifies its subjects, shifting the curriculum away from \"mental training\" toward specific useful content and skills. The identical-elements theory has been refined rather than overturned: modern research finds that transfer does occur but is often narrow and depends on shared structure, principles, and strategies (not only Thorndike's specific identical elements), so that the picture is more generous to transfer than his austere formulation while confirming his central destruction of the formal-discipline myth. This is Thorndike near his strongest.","era":"1874-1949","discipline":"Psychology","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"The Principles of Teaching Based on Psychology","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Teach- J ers have believed and acted on the thory that the mind was a collection of faculties or powers — observation, at- tention, memory, reasoning, will and the like — and that any gain in any faculty was a gain for the faculty as a whole. Improved attention to grammar or Latin would thus mean an improvement of the power to attend to any task.","label":"The Principles of Teaching Based on Psychology"},{"n":2,"work":"The Principles of Teaching Based on Psychology","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"The task of teaching is not to develop a reasoning faculty, but many special powers of thought about different kinds of facts. It is not to alter our general power of attention, but to build up many particular powers of attending to different kinds of facts. 58.","label":"The Principles of Teaching Based on Psychology"},{"n":3,"work":"Educational Psychology Vol 2 The Psychology of Learning","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Their implied point of view, however, is, again, with one or two exceptions, that alterations in mental powers are alterations in the general facility of attention, reasoning, etc. Books on applied psychology express this implication out- right, and books on education carry it to an amazing extreme.","label":"Educational Psychology Vol 2 The Psychology of Learning"},{"n":4,"work":"Educational Psychology Vol 2 The Psychology of Learning","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"It may seem merely humorous to record the doctrine that a study lacking other claims has disciplinary value, as a serious doctrine. As a matter of fact, however, the magical effects of studies on 'the mind' are rarely invoked save in 424 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING extr&mis.","label":"Educational Psychology Vol 2 The Psychology of Learning"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"the-law-of-effect","label":"The law of effect: is learning the stamping-in of connections by their consequences, without reason or insight?"},{"slug":"animal-intelligence","label":"Animal intelligence: do animals learn by trial and error rather than by reason or imitation?"},{"slug":"heredity-and-ability","label":"Heredity and ability: are individual and group differences in intelligence very largely inborn?"},{"slug":"measurement","label":"Measurement: does whatever exists exist in some amount, and can all mental qualities be measured?"}]}