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Journal
of
Educational
Psychology
1976,
Vol.
68, No. 2,
205-209
Illustrations,
Analogies,
and
Facilitative
Transfer
in
Prose
Learning
James
M.
Royer
and
Glenn
W.
Cable
University
of
Massachusetts
—
Amherst
Five
groups received
five
different
initial
passages
which
could
be
character-
ized
as
abstract
with illustrations,
abstract
with analogies, concrete, unem-
bellished abstract,
or a
control passage.
The
first
four
passages were con-
cerned with heat
flow
or
electrical conductivity, while
the
control passage
was
concerned with
an
unrelated topic.
The
groups then received
an
abstract
second
passage
concerned
with
a
topic different
from
the
initial
passage
(e.g.,
electrical conductivity given initial
heat
flow).
The
prediction, based
on
assumptions about knowledge structures,
was
that
the
first three groups
mentioned
above
would
recall significantly more
from
the
second passage
than
would
the
latter
two
groups.
The
results
confirmed
this
prediction.
The
research reported
in
this
article
is
concerned
with
the use of
illustrations
and
physical analogies
to
produce facilitative
transfer
in
prose learning. Recently, Royer
and
Cable (1975)
reported
one set of
condi-
tions under which facilitative transfer
would
occur.
They
hypothesized
that
such
transfer would
occur^when
two
conditions
were met: first, when
the
target
passage
(the second passage
in a
two-passage
se-
quence)
is
difficult
to
comprehend
and,
sec-
ond,
when
the
initial
passage
to
which
the
subjects
are
exposed establishes
a
"knowl-
edge
bridge" between information
the
sub-
ject
already
knows
and the
information
contained
in the
target
passage.
To
test
this
hypothesis, Royer
and
Cable
(1975)
constructed
two
passages,
one of
which
was
concerned with
the
flow
of
heat
through metals
and the
second with elec-
trical conductivity
in
metals. These pas-
sage
topics were chosen because both phe-
nomena (i.e.,
heat
flow
and
electrical con-
ductivity)
are
understandable given
a
basic
knowledge
of the
internal
structure
of
metals. Each
of
these
passages
was
then
prepared
in two
versions: concrete
and ab-
An
earlier version
of
this article
was
presented
at
the
meeting
of the
American Educational Research
Association,
Washington, D.C., 1975.
Requests
for
reprints should
be
sent
to
James
M.
Royer,
Department
of
Psychology,
University
of
Massachusetts,
Amherst,
Massachusetts
01002.
stract.
The
concrete version contained
as
many concrete referents
as
possible
and
also
contained physical analogies
for
por-
tions
of the
content.
For
example,
the
reg-
ular
crystalline
structure
of
metals
was
represented
as
being analogous
to a
tinker
toy
model where
the
discs
in the
model
represented
the
molecules
in the
metal
and
the
sticks between
the
discs repre-
sented
the
chemical bonds between
the
molecules.
The
second version
of
each pas-
sage
was
abstract
in
character
and was as
devoid
of
concrete referents
as
possible
and
contained
no
physical analogies.
The
rationale
behind
the
Royer
and Ca-
ble
(1975)
study
was
that
a
subject reading
an
initial concrete
passage
followed
by ex-
posure
to an
abstract
passage
differing
in
content
would
have
a new
knowledge
structure
—
established
via
exposure
to the
initial passage
—
into which
the
content
pf
the
second
passage
could
be
assimilated.
In
contrast,
a
subject receiving
an
initial
abstract
passage,
or an
unrelated control
passage,
would
not
have
a
relevant
knowl-
edge structure into which
the
abstract
sec-
ond
passage material could
be
assimilated
and
should learn less
from
the
passage.
Following
the
same argument, subjects
re-
ceiving
a
concrete passage
as the
second
passage should
not
differ
(regardless
of the
type
of
first
passage)
in
second
passage
learning. This should
be the
case since
the
content
of the
concrete passages would
be
205
