Effectiveness of error management Running head: EFFECTIVENESS OF ERROR MANAGEMENT TRAINING Effectiveness of Error Management Training: A Meta-Analysis

Error management training (EMT) is a training method that involves active exploration as well as explicit encouragement to make errors during training and to learn from them. Past evaluation studies, which compared skill-based training outcomes of EMT with those of proceduralized error-avoidant training or exploratory training without error encouragement, yielded considerable variation in effect sizes. The present meta-analysis compiles the results of the existing studies and seeks to explain this variation. Although the mean effect of EMT across all identified 24 studies (N = 2183) was positive and significant (Cohen's d = 0.44), there were several moderators. Moderator analyses showed effect sizes to be larger for posttraining transfer than for within-training performance (transfer performance: d = 0.56) and for performance tasks that were structurally distinct (adaptive transfer) rather than similar (analogical transfer) to training tasks (adaptive transfer: d = 0.80). In addition, both active exploration and error encouragement were identified as effective elements in EMT. Results suggest that EMT may be better suited than error-avoidant training methods to promote transfer to novel tasks.