Isomorphic Representations Lead to the Discovery of Different Forms of a Common Strategy with Different Degrees of Generality

* This research was in part supported by Grants N00014-96-1-0472 and N00014-95-1-0241 from the Office of Naval Research, Cognitive and Neural Sciences & Technology Division, and by a Seed Grant from the Office of Research at The Ohio State University. Abstract This study examines the effects of representational forms on the acquisition and transfer of problem solving strategies. Three isomorphic representations of the Tic-Tac-Toe are used as the experimental tasks. The experiment shows that different representations of a common structure lead to the discovery of different forms of a common strategy with varying degrees of generality. With a better representation, subjects not only learn faster but also acquire more general forms of the strategy. The transfer across different representations can be either positive or negative, and it is based on strategies, not on problem structures.