Meaningful learning and transfer of learning in games

We explore a distinction among different ways in which people learn, in the context of games. Psychologists have long recognized an important distinction between two kinds of learning: one that is relatively shallow, domain-specific and operates through repeated association of stimuli and outcomes; and another that is deeper, requires the acquisition of concepts or meaning, and transfers more easily across domains. The literature on learning in games focuses almost exclusively on the former, which we term adjustment learning. We provide compelling evidence of the latter kind of learning, which we term meaningful learning. In two experiments, we demonstrate that learning – the acquisition of iterated dominance – occurs in the absence of any feedback, a kind of learning that cannot be explained by adjustment learning processes but that is consistent with meaningful learning. Moreover, we demonstrate that, consistent with the psychological literature, such meaningful learning transfers to new domains (games), and that such transfer does not occur with adjustment learning.