Cognitive Development, 1, 103- 121 (1986)

Young Children’s Mental Models Determine

Analogical Transfer across Problems with a
Common Goal Structure

Ann 1. Brown
Mary J. Kane
Catharine H. Echols
University of Illinois

Analogical transfer in 3- to 5-year-olds was examined in three studies where the

children were required to notice the common underlying goal structure of a set of
problems. The children were either required to recall the prototype story before
tackling the transfer problem, or were explicitly prompted to attend to the com-
mon goal structure. Subjects who spontaneously focused on the goal structure in
their recall, or who were prompted to do so, transferred efficiently regardless of
age. Children who did not represent the problems at the level of underlying goal
paths, but instead attended to interesting surface features of particular stories,
failed to transfer. Children as young as 3 years of age have the underlying compe-
tence to transfer a common problem solution; level of representation rather than
age determines transfer efficiency. Transfer flexibility is not a simple function of
age but depends on the level of analysis afforded the base analogy. The results are
discussed in terms of emergent theories of mental models for learning via
analogy.

Flexible use of knowledge is a prerequisite for learning and development; hence

the study of transfer has an enduring place in the history of psychology. Central
though transfer mechanisms may be to theories of learning, they are little under-
stood. Nowhere is this more apparent than when young children are the learners
in question. In fact, two contradictory ‘claims exist, apparently without disso-
nance, in the developmental literature. First, there is a widespread claim that
learning in young children is inflexible; it is thought to be restricted, tied, or
welded to specific situations. Pitted against such claims is the contrary position

This research was supported by Grants HD-06864 and HD-05951 from the National Institute of
Child Health and Human Development. Preparation of the manuscript was supported by Spencer
Foundation funding to the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, where the first
author was a fellow in the 1984-85 academic year. Thanks are due to Joseph Campione and Rachel
Gelman for helpful comments on the manuscript. The teachers, parents, and children of Kinder Care,
Kinder Cassel, and the Child Center day care centers are gratefully acknowledged for their willing
cooperation in these studies.

Manuscript received June 24, 1985; revision accepted July 31, 1985 103
104 Ann L. Brown, Mary J. Kane, and Catharine H. Echols

that children constantly attempt to apply and update what they know, seeking to
gain more knowledge by interpreting novel events via analogy to a familiar
instance (Chukovsky, 197 l), or in terms of the framework of their extant theories
of the world (Carey, in press). In either case, transfer or application of the known
to the novel is seen as a building block of cognitive development.
Another form this contradiction takes is in the juxtaposed claims that pre-
schoolers’ knowledge is particularly fragile and fleeting, not to be relied upon for
consistent and general application, together with the counterpoint that major
impediments to the acquisition of new knowledge are strongly held naive theo-
ries, or partial understandings, that are persistently and inappropriately applied.
It is argued that children have difficulty relinquishing partially adequate theories
for new, more encompassing ones (Brown, Bransford, Ferrara, 8c Campione,
1983; Carey, in press; Gelman, 1983; Karmiloff-Smith, 1984). Thus, young
children’s knowledge is seen as fleeting and fragile on the one hand, and on the
other it is regarded as strongly entrenched and resistant to change.
Coherence can be brought to these apparent contradictions by classifying the
knowledge to be transferred in terms of its structural organization and functional
significance to the learner. Consider, for example, a continuum of knowledge
structures that spans four points: (1) theory, (2) principle, (3) isolated rule, and
(4) specific solution. If that which is to be transferred consists of a coherent
theory (Carey, in press), or a principled understanding (of, e.g., refraction; Judd,
1908), it is nigh on impossible to impede a flexible application of prior knowl-
edge; we see the world through the lenses of our preexisting theories. It is when a
learner is required to apply a previously learned isolated rule or specific solution
that observers decry a lack of transfer. It is common for fragmentary knowledge
to be embedded in one context, a tendency which impedes many occasions where
prior knowledge could be useful, but also protects the learner from massive and
unwarranted interference. Transfer in young children is no exception. They use
their emergent, naive theories of persons, objects, and events to grant coherence
to novel situations; but they are hesitant to apply fragmentary, unassimilated
knowledge, which tends to remain embedded within the specific contexts of
habitual use (Brown & Campione, 1981, 1984).
It has also been argued that the tendency to transfer problem solutions is
developmentally sensitive, the very young child being characterized as particu-
larly context bound. Transfer failures in the young could be attributed to several
factors--lack of motivation of interest, inadequate background knowledge,
etc.-but one obvious problem with many laboratory studies has been suspect
developmental designs, where older children are compared with younger chil-
dren on tasks calibrated to only the older sample. The claim of superior transfer
performance with age, as with any other form of competence, may be an artifact
of an inappropriate match between the younger children’s capabilities and the
task on which those abilities are assessed (Brown & DeLoache, 1978; Gelman,
1978).
Two recent studies, however, have used analogical problems of suitable in-
Analogical Transfer 105

terest and complexity for young children. Holyoak, Junn, and Billman (1984)
considered 5-year-olds’ ability to transfer a common solution that they heard in a
story and were required to use on an analogous physical problem. Transfer was
found when the analogies shared physical similarity, but there was very little
evidence of general rule abstraction under circumstances where the problems
differed considerably at the surface level. Holyoak et al. concluded that pre-
schoolers’ analogical transfer skills were “fragile and easily disrupted.” In
contrast, Crisafi and Brown (in press) found that 3-year olds transferred quite
readily across physically dissimilar problems if they had “taught” the base
solution to a puppet learner, and hence been forced to attend to the common
solution to the problem set. Asking adults to talk aloud about their solution paths
has also been found to be advantageous (Gagne & Smith, 1962; Rommetveit,
1966; Wilder & Harvey, 1971). The Crisafi and Brown studies differed from the
Holyoak et al. studies along a number of dimensions, so direct comparison is
impossible. Therefore, in this series of studies, we adopted a similar paradigm to
that used by Holyoak et al. in an attempt to look more closely at two questions:
(1) Can preschool children transfer a common solution across isomorphic story
problems that differ considerably in surface format; and (2) if not, why not?
To consider where the young child’s competence may break down, let us
analyze briefly what is involved in analogical transfer. Analogical thinking in-
volves the transfer of knowledge from one situation to another via mapping the
one-to-one correspondences between them. The solution to the original problem,
the base or prototype, is, by definition, known; the learner must note the corre-
spondence between the known problem and the new unsolved situation. In order
to use the known solution of the base problem, the learner must retrieve it in
appropriate form. The base problem with its solution must be processed as such,
rather than, say, as a story about magic or friendship, with the goal structure and
solution taking a secondary role. The optimal level of representation is one that
highlights the goal-structure of the causal event sequences that are common
across scenarios (Trabasso, Secco, & Van Den Broek, 1984). In noting the
commonalities, the learner deletes the surface differences between problems and
concentrates on the core similarities.
In order for learning by analogy to take place, the learner must represent the
base problem in terms of a generalized mental model (Gentner & Stevens, 1983;
Johnson-Laird, 1980), rather than in terms of specific surface details. In their
treatment of text comprehension, van Dijk and Kintsch (1983) distinguish be-
tween a textbase model, a semantic representation of the specific input discourse,
and a situation model, which is a generalized representation of the events,
activities, and persons seen from the perspective of the learner’s current knowl-
edge, goals, and purposes. Specific text inputs are assimilated to a generalized
frame or script for similar situations. As such, the situation model is a subjective,
abstract, “flexible schema allowing for a collection of similar situations” (van
Dijk & Kintsch, 1983), and hence forms an excellent basis for learning and
reasoning by analogy (Carbonell, 1982).
106 Ann 1. Brown, Mary j. Kane, and Catharine H. Echols

This brief description of the processes involved in analogical transfer give us

clues as to where the young child’s difficulties might center. First, quite simply,
do they remember the base analogy? It is a common mistake in developmental
theorizing to attribute lack of performance to an underlying deficit in competence
when the root problem is more appropriately ascribed to retention (Brown, 1975)
or attention (Zeaman & House, 1963) failures. Second, do they process the
analogies at the most advantageous level of representation, concentrating on the
causal goal structure (Black & Bower, 1980; Black & Wilensky, 1979) in order
to form a flexible situation model of the base analogy. If the stories are viewed as
unrelated narratives, rather than as general problem paths, transfer is unlikely to
occur. Although we do know that under ideal circumstances children are able to
process narrative in terms of its underlying story grammar (Mandler & Johnson,
1977; Stein & Glenn, 1979), we also know that when stories are less than well-
formed, children are distracted by interesting but trivial details (Brown &
Smiley, 1977). Indeed, a reflection of this problem is the need for, and success
of, training studies to improve even fourth- and fifth-graders’ retention of essen-
tial elements of stories (Fitzgerald & Spiegel, 1982; Gordon & Braun, 1983;
Short & Ryan, 1982). It is by no means farfetched to suspect that a transfer
failure across stories could be due to inadequate processing and/or retention of
the goal structure or solution path of the base analogy.
The main aim of this study was to examine children’s spontaneous and as-
sisted transfer across isomorphic story problems. To this end, we selected a set of
three stories sharing a common framework, the first based upon Holyoak et al.‘s
story of the Genie, modified in such a way that it included some interesting, but
irrelevant, setting statements. The three problems, the Genie, the Rabbit, and the
Farmer stories, are illustrated in Table 1. The common solution in all cases is to
take a large piece of posterboard and roll it into a hollow tube in order to transfer
the objects. This solution is illustrated in the Genie story, the base analogy, by
showing the Genie using his magic carpet (the paper) to transport the jewels. The
common goal structure of the three stories is illustrated in Table 2. Of interest is
whether preschool children process the analogies at an adequate level of repre-
sentation, one that focuses on the common underlying goal structure at the
expense of story-specific details.
If it is the case that children have difficulty representing the base story in a
flexible, general form, how might one help them concentrate on the abstract
frame at the expense of surface text-specific details? It is a common problem for
both adults and children that they tend to embed, fix, or weld a particular
solution to a specific context (Brown, 1975, 1978). It has been argued that such
“cognitive embeddedness” (Scheerer & Huling, 1960) can be overcome by
encouraging the learner to step back and “release” the specific solution in order
to view it in a wider context (Duncker & Krechevsky, 1939). In order to disem-
bed the abstract situation model from the specific details of each story, we
provided prompts that would ask the child to, in effect, fill in slots, free for
fitting, in an abstract model. Children asked to name the protagonist, the goal
Analogical Transfer 107

Table 1. The Three Analogous Problems

Problem 1. The Genie

A magic Genie lived for many years in a field behind a wall. His home was a very pretty bottle
where he lived happily and collected a fine set of jewels. But one day an envious witch put a
spell on the Genie. He was stuck to the spot, he couldn’t move his feet, all his magic powers
were gone. If he could move his home to the other side of the wall. he would be out of reach
of the spell and his magic would come back. He had found an even prettier larger bottle on the
other side, but he has a problem. How can he get his jewels across the high wall into the new
bottle without breaking them and without moving his feet? The Genie has all these treasures to
help him (glue, string, tape, etc.). Can you think of any way the Genie can get his jewels into
the new bottles?

Problem 2. The Rabbit

Here is the Easter Bunny’s problem. The Easter Bunny has to deliver all these Easter eggs to all
the little children before Easter (tomorrow), but he has been working so hard all week, painting
the eggs and hiding them for Easter egg hunts. He would really like to rest and to stay here
with his friends and have a picnic. If he stays, he won’t have time to finish delivering the
eggs. The Easter Bunny has finished delivering all the eggs on this side of the river (points to
picnic side), but he hasn’t started on the other side. The Easter Bunny has a rabbit friend on
the other side of the river who has offered to help him (points to second rabbit waiting with an
empty basket on the other side of the river), but how can the Easter Bunny get the eggs across
the river into his friend’s basket? The river is big, there are no bridges or boats, and rabbits
can’t swim and don’t like to get wet. What can he do? Can you think of anything he could use
to get the eggs to the helpful bunny?

Problem 3. The Farmer

Farmer Jones is very happy. He has picked a whole bunch of cherries and is taking them to
market. When he sells them, he will have enough money to go on vacation with his family.
They will go to the seaside. He wants to deliver the load of cherries to the market. That
morning there was a great storm, with rain, thunder, and lightening. But he cannot wait to take
the cherries to market because the cherries are just ripe now and will go bad. On his way to
market, he finds the road blocked by a very big fallen tree knocked over in the storm. What
can he do? He must get his cherries to market quickly, otherwise they will go bad. A friend
has driven his tractor up to the other side of the tree and will lend it to Farmer Jones, but how
will he get the cherries across the big, big tree? He can’t reach over, and he mustn’t damage
the cherries.

and the obstacle, etc. might be led to view the base analogy in terms of a general
goal path, or flexible situation model, that would then be free for transfer to
subsequent story problems dissimilar in surface features, but isomorphic with
respect to their goal structure frame.

STUDY 1
Method
Subjects. Ninety-six 4- and Syear-old children took part in this study. The
48 4-year-olds ranged in age from 4 years, 3 months to 4 years, 11 months, with
a mean of 4 years, 6 months. The 48 Syear-olds ranged in age from 5 years, 2
108 Ann 1. Brown, Mary 1. Kane, and Catharine H. Echols

Table 2. Common Goal Structure of Scenarios

Scenario

Genie . Rabbit Farmer

Protagonist

Genie Easter Bunny Farmer Jones

Transfer jewels Transfer eggs Transfer cherries

across wall into across river into across tree trunk
Goal bottle 2 basket 2 into vehicle 2

Obstacle Distance and wall Distance and river Distance and tree
Solution Roll paper Roll paper Roll paper

months to 5 years, 10 months, with a mean of 5 years, 5 months. All children

came from the same day care center in middle-sized Midwestern town. There
were approximately equal numbers of boys and girls at each age and in each
condition.

Materials. There were three scenarios enacted in the experiment: the Genie,
the Rabbit, and the Farmer (see Tables 1 and 2). Materials consisted of scenario-
specific props and a set of potential solution tools that was constant across
scenarios. These tools consisted of: scissors, a ball of string, paper clips, a stick,
glue, scotch tape, Styrofoam cups, rubber bands, a scarf, paper plates, napkins, a
pencil, a pencil sharpener, a sheaf of small pieces of paper, and a few sheets of
45.72 cm x 60.96 cm stiff white paper (18 in. X 24 in.). For each scenario a
stage was constructed, consisting of a large wooden base decorated and painted
to form the background of the scene. Thus, for the Genie scenario, the stage
consisted of a large brown field, divided by a brick wall constructed of card-
board. On the left side of the wall there was an upright Genie puppet, a papier-
mache bottle (large enough to house the puppet, and taller than the wall), and a
dish of brightly colored beads, in addition to the common solution tools. On the
right-hand side of the wall was a second bottle of equal height to the first but of
greater width, clearly bigger than the first bottle. Also available for the Genie
problem was an illustrated book that contained the Genie story.
The stage for the Rabbit scenario consisted of a large green field, constructed
of astroturf, bisected by a river constructed of crinkly, shiny blue paper. On the
left-hand side of the river was a rabbit puppet, carrying a basket of Easter eggs,
and a cat doll and a toy chicken surrounded by picnic paraphernalia. The com-
mon tools were also on this side. On the right-hand side of the river there was a
second, distinct rabbit doll with an empty basket.
The stage for the Farmer scenario comprised a gravel road, lined by grass and
trees with a fallen tree trunk dividing the road into two halves. On the left side of
Analogical Transfer 109

the fallen tree was a toy farmer, a red pickup truck filled with toy cherries, and
the common tools. On the right side of the fallen trees was a red flatbed tractor.

Procedure. The children were interviewed in a quiet room where they were
taken individually in order to play some new games. All subjects were given the,
three stories in the same order. The first problem, the Genie, was read to the
child. The child and the experimenter sat together looking at the pictures while
the experimenter read the Genie story out loud. Facing the pair were the concrete
props for the Genie problem. The Genie story is illustrated in Table 1; it is a
modified version of the Genie story used by Holyoak et al. (1984). The experi-
menter and the child read the solution in the book-the Genie used his magic
carpet to transport the jewels. The carpet was rolled into a hollow tube, placed
across the openings of each bottle, thus spanning the wall, and the jewels were
rolled across. The solution was read, the illustrations in the book discussed, and
then the child and the experimenter enacted the solution using the large piece of
white paper as a magic carpet/tube to transfer the colored beads from bottle to
bottle. This enactment stage, not part of the original Holyoak et al. procedure,
was added to make it perfectly clear that the paper had “hollow-tube potential”!
Following the Genie problem, the Genie paraphernalia were removed, includ-
ing the rolled paper, leaving the unrolled stack in plain view. The Rabbit props
were then placed on the table, next to the common solution tools. The children
were shown the two rabbits, one on either side of the river and told about the
Rabbit problem, illustrated in Table 1. No mention was made of the similarity
between stories.
After the child solved, or was shown the solution to, the Rabbit story, the
Rabbit props, including the rolled paper, were removed and replaced by the final
Farmer scenario. Again the unrolled stack of paper was in plain view. The child
was shown the two vehicles and then told the Farmer Jones story illustrated in
Table 1.
There were three experimental conditions: Explicit Goal Structure, Recall,
and Control. The purpose of the Explicit Goal Structure prompts was to concen-
trate the child’s attention on the abstract frame common to all stories, thus
freeing or disembedding the goal structure from the specific details of any partic-
ular story. After each scenario had been solved, the child was asked four ques-
tions to fill in the slots of a skeletal goal structure. First the child was asked for
the protagonist-Who has a problem (Genie, Easter Bunny, Farmer Jones)?
Then the child was asked for the goal-What did (the protagonist) want to do
(transfer jewels, transfer eggs, transfer cherries)? Next the child was probed for
the obstacle--What is stopping (the protagonist)? And finally the solution was
requested-How did (the protagonist)? get his (jewels, eggs, cherries) across’?
Either a verbal response, or the child pointing or enacting each response cor-
rectly, was accepted, although few children had difficulty with the verbal
response.
In the Recall condition, the children were simply asked to tell all they could
110 Ann 1. Brown, Mary J. Kane, and Catharine H. Echols

remember about the Genie story. All recalls were recorded. After solving the
Rabbit problem, these subjects were then given the explicit goal structure
prompts on the Rabbit story. In the Control condition, the three problems fol-
lowed each other without interruption. In no condition was there mention of the
similarity of the stories, each’ new problem being introduced as such.

Results

Transfer Problem I. The proportions of children solving the first transfer

problem-the Rabbit scenario, in the Explicit Goal Structure, Recall, and Con-
trol conditions-are shown in Figure 1, where it can be seen that subjects in the
Explicit Goal Structure Condition outperformed those in the Recall condition,
who in turn did better than the Control group. This effect of conditions was
significant, x2(2) = 14.87, p < .OOl. The difference between the Explicit Goal
Structure and Recall conditions was not reliable, but that between the Recall and
Control groups was.
Although there was a main effect of Age, x2( 1) = 4.20, p < .05, there were
no interactions involving the age variable, the same pattern being shown by both
4- and 5-year-olds. Quite simply, the older children transferred more in all
conditions (6year-olds = 35% unaided transfer vs. 56% for the 5-year-olds).

80

60

40

20

0 &
E&k!, Recall Control
Structure

Condition
Figure 1. Proportion of unaided transferrers as a function of Condition in Study 1.
Analogical Transfer 111

The performance of the children in the Recall condition deserves further

attention. Although all of the children proved willing to record their impressions
of the story on tape, some did so with greater skill than others. Of particular
interest is the fact that a sizable number of children at both ages recalled what
amounted to a perfect synopsis of the goal structure. Half the children in the
Recall condition did show this spontaneous recall of the goal structure (7 of the
16 4-year-olds and 9 of the 16 5-year-olds).
All recalls were transcribed and rated in terms of how closely they conformed
to this skeletal goal structure recall. Agreement could be reached on three sepa-
rate categories: (1) goal structure recall, where the child recalled all four ele-
ments of the goal structure (protagonist, goal, obstacle, and solution) but very
little trivia; (2) key element recall, where the child recalled important features of
the story, including some of the elements of the goal structure, but goal structure
elements did not predominate; and (3) derail recall, where the child recalled
isolated elements of the story together with importations of other details not
included in the story.
An example of goal structure recall would be as follows: “The Genie has lost
all of his powers ‘cause the witch put a spell on him. He has to get his jewels over
to the big bottle so he can get his powers back, but he’s stuck and can’t fly. So
Genie got the carpet, rolled it up, put it at both ends and the jewels rolled through
it!” (Mel). Another child remembered, “The Genie’s problem is that the witch
took away his magic. He can’t move. He has to get his powers back. So he
moves the jewels to the big pink bottle over there. He rolled up the carpet and
rolled the jewels into the other bottle” (Rick). And another recalled, “The Genie
doesn’t have his powers any more, the mean ugly witch put a spell on him, but he
can get ‘em back though. He can move his precious diamonds to the big bottle by
rolling up his rug. Then he rolls the diamonds through. That way his problem is
solved, isn’t it?” (Eliza).
Scored as a key element recall was the following: “The Genie’s problem is he
can’t get over the wall to the other bottle (elements of goal structure, i.e., the
protagonist and the obstacle). Because the witch took his powers away, and he
can never get them back” (Jay). Scored as an inadequate or detail recall was,
“The witch cast a spell on the Genie because he lives in a field in a bottle. Now
he can’t fly around anymore. So he is stuck. There’s no more magic around. But
then he flew away on his magic carpet and was seen no more” (Sandy). Similar-
ly, Allan recalled, “The problem is that the Genie is stuck and can’t get up. He
uses his magic wand and waves it over his head, and he can fly over to his bottle
and won’t be sad anymore.”
Although children in category 2 were better able to recall than those in
category 3, for the purposes of this study they were combined into a Recall Only
group. Children in category 1 were labeled the Goal Structure Recall group. In
effect, these subjects had provided for themselves the correct situational model
(van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983), that is, a skeletal outline of the story just like the
112 Ann 1. Brown, Mary J. Kane, and Catharine H. Echols

one that the prompts elicited in the Explicit Goal Structure group. Of interest is
the subsequent transfer history of these spontaneous goal structure recallers.
An important question concerns the locus of the recall effect. It could be that
the mere act of recalling is sufficient to enhance transfer, presumably because the
memory of the old problem is reactivated just prior to the presentation of the
novel one. Alternatively, any beneficial effect of recalling might be more specif-
ic, that is, determined by the increased number of subjects who are led to
regenerate the goal structure under instructions to recall. To separate these alter-
natives, we can compare the probability of transfer in the control group [p(T(C)]
with the conditional probability of transfer given that the subjects are required to
recall but do not regenerate the goal structure [p(T)RO)] . These should be equal
if recall itself is playing no role. Similarly, the conditional probability of transfer
given that the goal structure is recalled [p(T]GSR)] should equal the probability
of transfer in the Explicit Goal Structure condition if recall per se does not
contribute to transfer. If these pairs are not equal, then recall itself is helping
transfer.
The transfer performance of the four resultant groups (Explicit Goal Struc-
ture, Goal Structure Recall, Recall Only, and Control) is illustrated in Figure 2.
As can be seen, the spontaneous recallers of the goal structure are doing at least
as well as those in the prompted condition (Explicit Goal Structure), whereas the
children whose recall was not goal structure oriented perform on a level with the
Control group. The difference between the Goal Structure Recall and the remain-
ing Recall subjects was reliable, corrected (1) = 10.13, p < .Ol. The Recall
Only subjects did not differ reliably from the Control group. The difference
between the subjects who spontaneously recalled the goal structure (81% trans-
ferring) and those prompted to recall it in the Explicit Goal Structure group (68%
transferrers) fell just short of an acceptable level of significance. Given that
p(T]GSR) = p(T]EGS), and p(TIC) = p(T]RO), the conclusion is that recall per
se is not affecting transfer. The mechanism responsible for the increased number
of transferrers is the increased number of goal structure recallers.

Transfer Problem 2. After solving the first transfer problem (Rabbit or

Farmer), with or without aid, the children were given the second transfer prob-
lem (Farmer or Rabbit). Five-year-olds transferred better than 4-year-olds (Ex-
plicit Goal Structure = 93% vs. 63%; Recall = 75% vs. 56%; and Control =
65% vs. 440/o), and this difference was the only reliable finding, x (1) = 5.59, p
< .05. The effect of Conditions was not reliable.
Clearly those subjects who attended to the core goal structures of the analo-
gous stories transferred successfully, while those that did not do so overtly
showed the typical level (20%) of transfer success across problem isomorphs
reported for 2- to 20-year-olds in these kinds of experiments (Crisafi & Brown,
in press; Gick & Holyoak, 1980, .1983). The finding of superior transfer by
children in the Recall condition who spontaneously produced a goal structure
Analogical Transfer

100

80

60

Explicit
Goal-
Structure
Goal
Structure
Recall
Recall
L Control

Condition
Proportion of unaided transferrers as a function of Goal Structure Recall
in Study 1.

version of the previous story was serendipitous. Therefore, in Study 2 an addi-

tional set of children was tested to see if this finding would replicate.

STUDY 2

Method

Subjeck The subjects were 21 ZLyear-olds selected from a day care center
in a middle-sized Midwestern town. They ranged in age from 5 years, 1 month to
5 years, 8 months, with a mean of 5 years, 3 months. There were approximately
equal numbers of males and females.

Materials. These were identical to those of Study 1.

114 Ann 1. Brown, Mary J. Kane, and Catharine H. Echols

Procedure. The procedure was the same as the Recall Condition of Study 1.
All children received the Genie story first, then the two transfer problems (Rab-
bit, Farmer) in counterbalanced order. After seeing the solution to the Genie
story, they were all asked to recall that story into a tape recorder.
Of the 21 subjects tested, i 1 were judged to have recalled all elements of the
goal structure and little detail. The transfer efficiency of the resulting two
groups, Goal Structure Recall and Recall Only, is illustrated in Figure 3, together
with the similar data from Study l-very similar data indeed. Nine of the 11
Goal Structure recallers achieved unaided transfer (82%), compared with 2 of the
10 Recall Only subjects (20%). This difference was rehable, corrected x2( 1) =
5.74, p < .05.
Once again, there were no reliable differences found on the second transfer

Goal Structure
q Recall
fgj Recall

80

60

Study 1 Study 2 Study 3

Figure 3. Proportion of unaided transferrers as a function of Goal Structure Recall
In Studies l-3.
Analogical Transfer 115

problem, where 60% of the Recall Only group achieved unaided transfer com-
pared with 91% in the Explicit recall condition.
Of interest is the fact that 3 of the Recall Only children actually included all
four elements of the goal structure in their recall but added so many other details
that they were judged not to be Goal Structure recallers, that is, the main theme
of the recall was an elaborated magic plot, with the solution of using the carpet in
some way relegated to a minor place. None of these children transferred. A
careful examination of the key element recalls of Study 1 also reve’aled 4 children
who recalled all elements, but did not emphasize this aspect of the story. Only 1
of these children transferred. So transfer was not apparent even in the few cases
where the elements of the goal structure were all retained, but the children
recalled a story where the solution path was not the main theme. The difference
between these recalls and those generated by the true Goal Structure recallers
was very clear. Goal structure recall students retold the four elements of the goal
path and nothing else, except perhaps a setting statement such as Mel’s or a
concluding comment such as Eliza’s (see Study 1).
One problem of interpretation is to pin down just what is the difficulty experi-
enced by the Recall Only children. Is it the case that they have simply forgotten
the goal structure elements? This was not true of at least 7 children, as we have
just seen. Or is the failure more one of selective attention, that is, do they attend
to other distracting elements of the story, notably the magical overtones, and
favor these in their recall? This was the subjective impression gained by both the
experimenter and the story raters. In Study 3 we attempted to distinguish be-
tween these two interpretations experimentally.

STUDY 3
Method
Subjects. The subjects were 43 children attending a day care center in a
middle-sized Midwestern town. Thirty of the children were 5-year-olds (mean =
5 years, 4 months, range = 5 years, 3 months to 5 years, 10 months), and 13
were 3-year-olds (mean = 3 years, 7 months, range = 3 years, 3 months to 4
years, 0 months).

Procedures. The materials and procedures were similar to those of Studies 1

and 2, with the following exceptions: (1) The children solved only two problems,
the Genie followed by either Rabbit or Farmer; and (2) all subjects were asked to
recall the story after witnessing the Genie solution. Those subjects achieving a
goal structure recall were then given the transfer problem. Of the subjects whose
recall was not judged to focus on the goal structure elements, half were desig-
nated the Control group and also passed on to the transfer phase with no addi-
tional intervention. The remaining poor recallers were given the four explicit
goal structure prompts from Study 1 (protagonist, goal, obstacle, and solution).
116 Ann 1. Brown, Mary j. Kane, and Catharine H. Echols

Results
Considering first the 5year-olds, 16 out of 30 (53%) achieved goal structure
recalls. Of these, 11 out of 16 (68%) showed unaided transfer. None of the 14
poor recallers retained all elements of the goal structure (mean number of ele-
ments = 1.8). Of these, 7 were assigned to the Control condition, and only 1
child transferred (14%). These data are illustrated in Figure 3, so that the sim-
ilarity of the patterns across experiments can be emphasized. The difference
between the Goal Structure Recall (68%) and the Recall Only (14%) groups was
reliable, x2(l) = 4.67, p < .05.
The remaining 7 5-year-olds did not recall the goal structure, but were
prompted to so by means of the four explicit prompts of Study 1. All 7 answered
these questions correctly, showing that they had not forgotten the common story
elements. And 5 of these 7 children (71%) transferred without aid. The dif-
ference between the spontaneous (68%) and prompted recallers (71%) was not
reliable.
Turning now to the 3-year-olds, only 2 of 13 children managed any kind of
coherent recall, and both gave excellent renditions of the goal structure. Both of
these children also achieved unaided transfer. The remaining 11 3-year-olds were
all given explicit goal structure prompts. Again, under prompting, the children
had no difficulty recalling the essential elements. Combining the 5-year-olds’
and 3-year-olds’ data, all of the 18 children who received prompts after failing to
recall immediately retrieved the four key elements of the story. Seven of the 11
3-year-olds (64%) then achieved unaided transfer. The difference between 3-
year-olds and 5-year-olds in the explicit goal structure condition was not reliable
(64% vs. 71%).

DISCUSSION

Children as young as 3 years of age can transfer a common solution across

situations if they represent the base analogy at an appropriate level of analysis.
“Deep processing” (Craik & Lockhart, 1972) or “transfer-appropriate process-
ing” (Bransford, 1979) have long been known to facilitate retention and transfer
even in preschool children (Brown, 1975; Murphy & Brown, 1975), but it has
sometimes been unclear in the developmental literature how one distinguishes
deep or appropriate processing from less advantageous kinds, except by circular
reasoning-the child who does well must have processed at an appropriate level.
In these studies, the appropriate level of analysis is clear and independently
measurable, referring to the propensity to represent stories in terms of an abstract
situation (van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983) or mental (Johnson-Laird, 1980) model of
the goal structure underlying the critical event sequences. Children who spon-
taneously attend to the goal structure and disregard trivia also note the one-to-one
correspondences between the stories.
Mechanisms that draw children’s attention to the common deep structure of
Analogical Transfer 117

analogous problems facilitate transfer. For example, in a study with 2- to 4-year-

olds, Crisafi and Brown (in press) found that requesting the child to teach a
simple physical solution to Kermit the Frog forced them to concentrate on the
goal structure of the base analogy and hence facilitated transfer throughout a set
of problems sharing the common solution. In the current studies, where story
problems were used, prompting the child to fill in the slots representing the four
key elements of the goal structure freed or “disembedded” the common abstract
structure from the specific text base details (Scheerer & Huling, 1960; van Dijk
& Kintsch, 1983), thus also leading to transfer. Note that memory per se was not
the problem, as all children who were prompted were able to retrieve the answers
to the goal structure hints without any difficulty. Rather, the key factor was
whether or not an optimal mental model was achieved, one that brings into high
relief the common goal structure and commits task-specific features to a second-
ary place.
It is important to note that it is level of representation that determines transfer
rather than age per se, although, of course, age and representational efficiency
are correlated. Most children who spontaneously focused on the goal structure
transferred, irrespective of age, and the same was true of prompted performance.
It is particularly true for very young learners that difficulties with performance
factors or processing demands (Brown & Reeve, in press; Flavell, 1982; Shatz,
1978) can occlude underlying ability. A child’s performace is determined by a
combination of factors of which conceptual competence is just one (Gelman,
Meek, & Merkin, in press; Gelman & Brown, in press; Greeno, Riley, &
Gelman, 1984). Before drawing conclusions concerning cognitive ability, it is
essential that one can distinguish between breakdowns in some unwieldy perfor-
mance factors specific to the task at hand, and a genuine lack of a particular
cognitive competence. Recent work with preschoolers that has been guided by a
search for underlying competence has been rewarded with repeated glimpses of
the young child’s complex capabilities. It is possible that prior findings of labora-
tory transfer failures in the young may also be attributable to specific perfor-
mance factors masking the child’s true flexibility.
We would like to emphasize that this is not a claim that preschool children are
as efficient as adults. In most cases where we find clear evidence of ,early
competence, we still see a gradual refinement and extension of the skill with age
(Brown, Bransford, Ferrara, & Campione, 1983; Gelman, 1978). Obviously, the
college students in Gick and Holyoak’s (1980, 1983) studies of analogical trans-
fer would have no difficulty solving the set of problems we gave to 3-year-olds,
but it would not make sense to conclude that, therefore, they were better transfer-
rers. Comparing 3-year-olds with 20-year-olds in this way makes this develop-
mental point clear. It is, however, not unusual to see young-, middle-, and older-
aged children compared on a task of suitable difficulty for only the older students
and a claim of superior transfer with age made. It is necessary to select tasks of
suitable difficulty for the age range under consideration if one wants to assess
basic competence in the young.
118 Ann L. Brown, Mary J. Kane, and Catharine H. Echols

Just as in this series of studies we concentrated on uncovering the conditions

which would reveal transfer in young children, it would by no means be difficult
to find the condition under which their efficiency would break down. For exam-
ple, difficulties due to the processing demands of keeping track of several levels
of a complex analogy between two domains might lead to transfer failures even if
the analogy were noticed and the child were attempting to map the solution to a
novel task. Performance breakdowns attributed to: (a) an overloaded processing
capacity for keeping track of several levels of a difficult mapping; and/or (b)
inadequate knowledge of the base or target domain (Keil & Batterman, 1984;
Keil, 1986) would be expected to produce developmental differences in transfer
flexibility.
Thus, the success of the explicit prompt procedures in generating flexible
transfer should not mask the fact that only 20% of children spontaneously trans-
ferred in the Control condition where they were not asked to retrieve the goal
structure. Fully 80% of these children failed to note what seems like obvious
problem similarity. This finding is ubiquitous in the literature, leading many to
claim that transfer is difficult to engineer, or indeed impossible, unless common
physical or identical elements are shared between problems (Thorndike & Wood-
worth, 1901). Controversial though these claims may be (Allport, 1937; Judd,
1908; Orata, 1928; Ruger, 1910), the persistent finding of only a minority of
spontaneous transferrers, be they children (Crisafi & Brown, in press; Holyoak et
al., 1984) or adults (Gick & Holyoak, 1980, 1983; Reed, Ernst, & Bane@,
1974) needs some explanation. One that is rarely considered is that some com-
partmentalization of knowledge may be adaptive in order to reduce interference
(Campione & Brown, 1974). Not all events in the world are related, and flexible
use of knowledge must involve considerable discrimination as well as generaliza-
tion. The effective learner is one who can discriminate appropriate occasions of
application from those where the knowledge would be inappropriate. A case
could be made that problem-solving difficulties arise just as readily from inap-
propriate application of rules as from a failure to transfer information across task
boundaries.
In this light, consider the difference between the way analogies are used for
instructional purposes and the modal laboratory paradigm, which we will argue
is not a natural vehicle for showing transfer. During instruction the typical
procedure is as follows: Problem A, for example, a simple fractions problem, is
introduced. Next, Problem B is presented explicitly in order to illustrate Problem
A. A classic example of an illustrative analogy for introducing fractions would
be that of a pie that must be divided into equal portions. The similarity of the
illustrative pie analogy to the “fractions” problem at hand is quite explicit and
fully discussed. In contrast, consider the traditional transfer paradigm, such as
that used in the present studies. Problem A is presented followed by Problem B;
great care is taken to ensure that no hint of problem similarity is leaked to the
unsuspecting subjects; no indication is given that Problem B is another token of
Analogical Transfer 119

the same type as Problem A. The whole trick is that students should notice the
similarity on their own volition, but why should they? If learners were in fact in
the habit of noting similarities between all adjacent events, they would soon be
overwhelmed by interference. In short, it is part of a communicative pact that
analogies are usually introduced as explicit examples and transfer between them
socially mediated. What has been deplored as transfer inefficiency in the typical
laboratory paradigm may have little to do with competence in analogical think-
ing; rather, it may be a reflection of the difficulty experienced by most learners
when faced with decontextualized problems demanding trick solutions.
Guided by a set of principles (Judd, 1908; Ruger, 1910), hypotheses (Kar-
miloff-Smith, 1984), or naive theories (Carey, in press) that they wish to evalu-
ate and perfect, children spontaneously try to apply and extend the knowledge
they have in order to make sense of their world; indeed, it would be difficult to
prevent them from doing so. As we have seen in these studies, even when
learning specific solutions in laboratory situations that do not encourage transfer,
children reason by analogy given the knowledge base to foster a comparison and
a task that does not overwhelm their processing capabilities. Children as young
as 3 are perfectly capable of analogical transfer; however, transfer flexibility,
involving, as it must, both knowledge and information processing factors, will
not be related in a simple monotonic manner to age.

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