Goal Specificity and the Generality of Schema Acquisition

Fourteen statistics novices were asked to solve three statistics word problems under standard (SGS) or reduced (RGS) goal specificity. Later, they were asked to solve both structurally identical and structurally different transfer problems, and their structural knowledge of the domain was assessed. Results indicate that participants in the RGS condition performed better on the structurally different transfer problems and had acquired structural knowledge more similar to that of a domain expert. These results extend previous work in showing that the schematic knowledge acquired under reduced goal specificity training is more general than previously realized. The goal specificity effect is discussed in terms of the attentional focus required to solve RGS and SGS problems.