Significant Negative Transfer Research Articles

Analysis of Problems and Strategies in College French Writing

This article mainly discusses the problems existing in College French writing and the corresponding strategies. Writing is an important skill that students must master, but there are three main problems in College French teaching: limited vocabulary leading to frequent pragmatic errors; significant negative transfer from native language; and difficulties in closely adhering to the essay topic or the beginning of the paragraph. To address these issues, teachers adopt a variety of targeted teaching strategies, including task-based language teaching, intercultural communication teaching methods, and process writing approaches. The implementation of these strategies has significantly improved the students’ College French writing skills.

The Influence of Pontianak Melayu Dialect Towards the Students’ Pronunciation of English Speech Sounds

This qualitative research attempted to review the influence of the Pontianak Melayu dialect on students’ English pronunciation of English speech sounds. The objectives of the study were to explain the influence of Pontianak Melayu dialect on students’ English pronunciation of vowels, consonants, diphthongs, and consonant clusters and to explain the way teachers play their roles to improve students’ pronunciation. This study used a qualitative case study design. The subjects of this study were 17 students from seventh-grade of Junior High School who are originally from the Pontianak. The data were collected by using questionnaires, students’ recordings, observation checklists, and interviews. The results of this study show that the Pontianak Melayu dialect contributed insignificant positive transfer on English vowel sounds [ɔ:], [ʊ], and [ɒ]. It gave significant negative transfer on English consonant sounds [f, v, k, s]. It also gave insignificant negative transfer on English diphthong sound [aɪ]. It gave significant negative transfer on English consonant cluster sounds [fr] and [kl], and significant negative transfer on three consonant clusters. Meanwhile, the teacher did play her role in improving students’ pronunciation. Based on the findings, it can be concluded that the Pontianak Melayu dialect did not strongly give positive and negative transfer to the students’ English pronunciation. The easiness might be caused by the similarities between the Pontianak Melayu language and English. The difficulties might be caused by the lack of students’ knowledge about correct pronunciation, lack of pronunciation practice, students’ inability to recognize the words, and spelling interference. In teaching pronunciation processes, the teachers and the students should be supported each other to reach the best achievement. The teachers taught by supporting media such as English songs, western movies or English short stories, etc. Meanwhile, the students practice more and more.

The Influence of Kemak Sanirin Dialect Towards Students’ English Pronunciation

This qualitative research attempted to review the influence of Kemak Sanirin dialect towards students’ English pronunciation. The objectives of the study were to explain the influence of Kemak Sanirin dialect towards students’ English pronunciation of vowels, consonants, diphthongs, and consonant clusters and to explain the way teachers play their roles to improve students’ pronunciation. This study employed descriptive qualitative method. The subjects of this study were 18 students from eleventh grade students of SMA Negeri 3 Atambua. The data were collected by using questionnaire, students’ recording, observation checklist, and interview. Then, the results of this study show that Kemak Sanirin dialect contributed some positive transfer on vowels (i, ɪ, u, e, ʊ, and ə), insignificant negative transfer on consonants (p, b, k, r, s, g, m, etc.) and siginificant negative transfer on consonant (z), significant positive transfer on diphtongs (eɪ, aɪ, au) and significant negative transfer on (ɔɪ, ɛə, əʊ, and ɪə), significant negative transfer on three consonant clusters, while teacher did play his roles in improving students’ pronunciation.

Learned Manipulation at Unconstrained Contacts Does Not Transfer across Hands

Recent studies about sensorimotor control of the human hand have focused on how dexterous manipulation is learned and generalized. Here we address this question by testing the extent to which learned manipulation can be transferred when the contralateral hand is used and/or object orientation is reversed. We asked subjects to use a precision grip to lift a grip device with an asymmetrical mass distribution while minimizing object roll during lifting by generating a compensatory torque. Subjects were allowed to grasp anywhere on the object’s vertical surfaces, and were therefore able to modulate both digit positions and forces. After every block of eight trials performed in one manipulation context (i.e., using the right hand and at a given object orientation), subjects had to lift the same object in the second context for one trial (transfer trial). Context changes were made by asking subjects to switch the hand used to lift the object and/or rotate the object 180° about a vertical axis. Therefore, three transfer conditions, hand switch (HS), object rotation (OR), and both hand switch and object rotation (HS+OR), were tested and compared with hand matched control groups who did not experience context changes. We found that subjects in all transfer conditions adapted digit positions across multiple transfer trials similar to the learning of control groups, regardless of different changes of contexts. Moreover, subjects in both HS and HS+OR group also adapted digit forces similar to the control group, suggesting independent learning of the left hand. In contrast, the OR group showed significant negative transfer of the compensatory torque due to an inability to adapt digit forces. Our results indicate that internal representations of dexterous manipulation tasks may be primarily built through the hand used for learning and cannot be transferred across hands.

Heightened Interference on Implicit, but Not Explicit, Tests of Negative Transfer: Evidence from Patients with Unilateral Temporal Lobe Lesions and Normal Old People

The present research investigated alternative explanations of heightened interference in AB-AC learning in individuals with memory loss related to medial temporal lobe dysfunction. In Experiment 1, patients with left or right temporal lobectomy and control subjects were administered the standard AB-AC test. Relative to the other groups, left temporal patients exhibited significant negative transfer that was characterized by large numbers of response intrusion errors. In Experiment 2, groups of community-dwelling old and young adults were administered the standard test and an implicit version in which, during AC testing, subjects were instructed to provide the first word that comes to mind in response to stimulus words. There were no differences between groups on either version. Of particular interest was that both groups made significantly more intrusion errors on the implicit test and did not differ on this measure. It was concluded that exaggerated interference in AB-AC learning, as reflected by response intrusion errors, is related to the use of implicit memory processes rather than a failure of inhibitory mechanisms. Memory-impaired individuals, who have a selective loss of explicit memory, are vulnerable on this task because they rely excessively on implicit memory processes.

Does imagery impede or facilitate transfer of learning?

Stimulus imagery level (pictures vs. words) and instructions to subjects (neutral vs. interactive imagery) were orthogonally manipulated in order to investigate their joint effect on transfer. One hundred forty-four students learned three lists conforming either to an A-B, A-D, A-F transfer paradigm or to an A-B, C-D, E-F transfer paradigm. With neutral instructions, there was no evidence of significant negative transfer for pictures or words. With imagery instructions, there was significant negative transfer for words but not for pictures. Discussion focused on the failure to find reduced associative interference in the typical paradigm (words with imagery instructions) used in popular mnemonic techniques.

Transfer of discrimination from solid objects to pictures by pigeons: A test of theoretical models of pictorial perception

Various authors have suggested that learning associations between objects and pictures is a necessary condition for the perception of pictures. If so, then animals, never exposed to situations in which those associations might be learned, should not show transfer between objects and pictures. In this investigation, pigeons trained to discriminate between two solid objects were retrained with reinforcement reversal on either the objects themselves or photographs, line drawings, or silhouettes of the objects. Significant negative transfer indicated object-photograph and object-silhouette equivalence, but no transfer was found to line drawings. Positive transfer to photographs was also demonstrated. Transfer did not appear to be a function of object-picture confusability.

Incidentally learned associations and imagery in verbal discrimination transfer

The effects of imagery (I) of List 2 right (R) items on verbal discrimination (VD) transfer were examined. Two levels of I were crossed with the experimental (E) paradigm of W1 -R1, W1 -R2 and the control (C) paradigm of W1 -R1, W2 -R2. Significant negative transfer was obtained with the E paradigm when low I was employed; however, List 2 R item high I eliminated the negative transfer effect on List 2 acquisition in the E paradigm. The results were discussed in terms of the frequency theory of verbal discrimination and an incidental associative interference hypothesis.

Relations between serial and paired-associate learning in children

Fourth grade subjects learned a serial list of six words, then a paired-associate list of six word pairs. The first three words of the serial task became correct responses for three PA pairs, while other PA words were new. Significant negative transfer was obtained for those PA pairs containing responses from the serial list. While serial and PA learning were not correlated, both serial and PA learning were significantly correlated with IQ.

Noise, negative transfer, and meaningfulness

Two studies were conducted to test the hypothesis that the presence of noise, which Ss were instructed to ignore, would facilitate performance on a negative-transfer learning paradigm but not performance on a control learning paradigm. The effect of noise on two levels of item meaningfulness for each paradigm was also studied. In both experiments, negative transfer was successfully generated for low-meaningful items and the predicted interaction between learning paradigms and treatments was obtained. In neither experiment was significant negative transfer generated for high-meaningful items, and the predicted interaction between paradigms and treatments was not obtained.

Acquisition and transfer differences between Kindergarteners and Second-graders on aurally and visually presented paired-associates using an A-B, A-C design

Kindergarten and second-grade children were trained in an A-B, A-C paired-associate task using five pairs and two modes (aural and visual) of presentation. It was found that, contrary to expectations, acquisition on the first list was significantly faster for the visual mode. In addition, both Kindergarteners and Second-graders exhibited significant negative transfer.

Verbal transfer in repaired paradigms as a function of S1 — R2 and S2 — R1 similarity

Two predictions from Houston’s (1965) repaired transfer surface were tested using 30 Ss in a within subject design. Three two-list paired associate paradigms (AB—BAr, AB—B’Ar, AB—BA’r) were compared with the control condition AB—CD. In accordance with the predictions, it was found that the three experimental paradigms produced significant negative transfer, with the AB—BAr paradigm producing the most and the AB—B’Ar and AB—BA’r paradigms producing intermediate levels of negative transfer.

Associative transfer as a function of conceptual similarity of stimuli in pre-school aged children

The effects of conceptual similarity on the A-C and A-Br transfer paradigms were investigated in pre-school aged children using pictures of familiar objects as stimuli. The effect of similarity was significant in both Task 1 and Task 2 as was performance over trials. Significant negative transfer was found in the second task for both the A-C and A-Br paradigms. The extent of this interference was not a function of stimulus similarity.

Transfer in the A-B, C-B paradigm as a function of stimulus class

The effect of the relationship between the form-classes of the stimulus components in the A-B, C-B transfer paradigm was investigated. Relative to the A-B, C-D paradigm, significant negative transfer was found when A and C were from the same class (both nonsense syllables). When A and C were from different classes (adjectives or geometric figures and nonsense syllables), less negative transfer occurred. The results were interpreted in terms of R-S interference as a source of negative transfer in the C-B paradigm, with the degree of interference being a function of the similarity between the form-classes of the stimuli for the two lists.

Effect of Forced Paired-Comparison on Paired-Associate Learning and Meaningfulness

Two methods of familiarization were used to explore the role of differentiation in verbal learning: simple frequency pretraining, and practice on a paired-comparisons rating task which was designed to increase differentiability. Results showed that the differentiation pretraining resulted in superior learning to frequency pretraining. But, there was significant negative transfer for the frequency groups. The negative transfer was attributed to incorrect habits due to weak interitem associations built up during familiarization. The divergence of these results from earlier work on familiarization may be due to a displacement backward of the course of learning due to the great difficulty of the task and the low availability of the items after familiarization. This divergence may be overcome in a less difficult task by continued learning or by increased familiarization. Pretraining had no effect on a production test of meaningfulness.