Young children’s transfer of learning on a touchscreen tablet is determined by similarities between tasks and between digital contexts

Abstract

Transfer of learning is influenced by transfer distance, i.e., the degree of correspondence of contexts as well as of the content to be transferred between a main task and a transfer task (Barnett & Ceci, 2002; Klahr & Chen, 2011). A long tradition of research has used either similarity of tasks or similarity of contexts designs to test transfer distance in problem-solving in children. To our knowledge, no study to date has experimentally varied the degree of similarities between tasks and between contexts jointly, which is the aim of this study. In the present study, we varied the degree of similarity between tasks, by presenting different versions of the Tower of Hanoi (ToH), and between digital learning contexts, by presenting different graphical interfaces. One hundred children aged 6 to 7 years old were divided into four conditions, High similarity of tasks/High similarity of contexts (H/H); High similarity of tasks/Low similarity of contexts (H/L); Low similarity of tasks/High similarity of contexts (L/H); Low similarity of tasks/Low similarity of contexts (L/L). Inhibitory control was also measured, as it may be involved in transfer of learning (Clerc, Miller, & Cosnefroy, 2014; Thibaut, French, Vezneva, Gérard, & Glady, 2011). Transfer of the solving procedure was accompanied by a performance decrement in the L/L and H/L conditions, whereas no such decrement was observed in the L/H and H/H conditions, showing the role of the similarity of digital contexts. Furthermore, inhibition scores predicted transfer performance. Results are discussed considering the theoretical framework of similarities between tasks and between contexts, and the role of inhibition.