Assignment 1

Positive transfer: knowledge of programming made math easier Negative transfer: when learning german ‘see’ means ‘lake’, not ‘sea’ (“false friends”) Vertical transfer: knowledge of powers is required before logarithms can be understood Lateral transfer: goal keeping skills from handball training can be applied during gymnastics Near transfer: a test question is identical to a homework question, but with different numbers Far transfer: during Tamara’s lecture, the second riddle with the fortress and troops Specific transfer: learning german grammar is easy because it is so similar to dutch grammar General transfer: ‘inzicht’-questions (the I from RTTI) on high school tests

I don’t quite get the difference between near/far and specific/general. Because if the task overlaps, the situation is presumably also the same? and if the situation is not the same, the task overlaps less? I can think of very little examples that would be clearly just specific transfer or just near transfer?

2.

a.

• to prevent negative transfer with “false friends” in language learning, you can: 1) increase time interval between learning words in different languages, or 2) emphasize differences.
• to learn mathematics, the order is important, and learning can be scaffolded
• transfer for answering I-questions could be improved by meaningful learning rather than rote learning.

b.

• problem-solving in groups, to learn from eachother’s strategies and to be more aware of the mental processes
• using real-world cases/problems in education (kind of like the LLO’s we do for OWW)
• including transfer in assesment (which is kind of what my high school was doing with TTI-questions)

Assignment 2

1. When something learned in one situation hinders a person’s ability to learn or perform in another situation, this is called:

a) Negative transfer b) Lateral transfer c) Retroactive inhibition

Correct: A, p. 420 Why: Lateral/vertical transfer is about prior knowledge and task complexity, and inhibition is an explanation for forgetting, not transfer. Bloom: remember

1. Why is negative reinforcement not the same as punishment?

a) Negative reinforcement decreases a behavior by removing a pleasant stimulus, punishment decreases it by presenting an unpleasant one. b) Negative reinforcement increases a behavior by removing an unpleasant stimulus, punishment decreases a behavior. c) Negative reinforcement uses only unpleasant stimuli, punishment uses only pleasant ones.

Correct: B, p. 60-73 Why: Reinforcement is a form of rewarding. The “negative” is about the stimulus: you take it away, it does not mean “bad”. People confuse this with punishment. Option B is correct, option A would be chosen if negative reinforcement is only semi-understood (if people know it’s “negative = taking something away”, but don’t understand that reinforcement = reward), and C is the obvious bogus answer. Bloom: understand

1. A teacher wants that a very shy student presents in front of class. She does this by first praising him when answering a question sitting down, later by only praising him when standing up, and after that, only if he presents something in a small group, and finally only when presenting for the whole class. What is this operant conditioning technique called?

Answer: shaping, p. 62 Why: The target behaviour doesn’t exist yet, so can’t be reinforced. Instead, the teacher reinforces closer and closer approximations of the behaviour. Bloom: apply