Nokes T. Mechanisms of knowledge transfer

Thinking & Reasoning, 2009, 15 (1), 1–36.A central goal of cognitive science is to develop a general theory of transfer to explain how people use and apply their prior knowledge to solve new problems. Previous work has identified multiple mechanisms of transfer including (but not limited to) analogy, knowledge compilation, and constraint violation. A framework for the development of a general theory of transfer based on multiple mechanisms is proposed.