Interference Between Related Mental Processes

Abstract

Curiously enough in the discussion of transfer of training one point seems to have been agreed upon by all parties to the con troversy, namely, that there is transfer of identical elements. In early experiments the identical element was an idea1 common to both the practice series and the test series, or the identical ele ment consisted of sensations, images, movements.2 Later by identical elements were meant mental processes which have the same cell action in the brain as their physical correlates.3 Such an identical element is probably not accessible to experimental investigation. From the outset of the discussion, however, it has been claimed that, improvement in addition will alter one's ability in multipli cation because addition is absolutely identical with a part of mul tiplication and because certain other processes?for example, eye movements and the inhibition of all save arithmetical impulses? are in part common to the two functions. ' '4 This view is expanded by Gates into a theory of transfer,5 and, since the identical elements of addition and multiplication, subtrac tion and division seem to be objective, this claim has gone far toward the belief that the study of the environment and reactions to it may well replace the study of the mind?one form of current behaviorism. Professor Poffenberger tested the assumption that practice in addition transfers to multiplication, and that in subtraction there is transfer to division because of the partial identity of the processes.