182 SECTIONAL ADDRESSE.S. 



Recently Dr. C. E. Beeby^' investigated the transfer of ability between 

 performances involving one or both hands. Subjects were trained, 

 blindfold, to trace with a metal stylus (connected, to record errors, with 

 an electric circuit) along strips of metal, shaped in simple geometrical 

 forms. An initial positive transfer was found. With further practice 

 it gradually diminished. Finally, it passed over into its antithesis, 

 interference, or negative transfer. The amount of transfer, both initial 

 and final, proved to be the same whether it occurred 



(a) from one hand's performance to that of the other, 



(6) from a double-handed action to one of the single-handed movements 

 constituting it, 



(c) from a single-handed to a double-handed action. 



Beeby concluded that the agency of positive transfer was a general 

 mental attitude. He found no positive transfer of specific manipulative 

 habits. Indeed, nothing but interference occurred between them. This 

 interference explains the final negative transfer. 



An extensive investigation into transfer of training in a low-grade 

 skill was recently carried out in the Manchester laboratory by J. N. 

 Langdon and Edna M. Yates.^" Possibly for the first time in such 

 experiments a number of conditions were rigidly observed. These were 

 the domination of the learners' motives, the selection of a really skilled 

 performance, though a simple one, as the test-activity, the testing of similar 

 control subjects in strictly comparable conditions, and the simultaneous 

 provision of ' anal)rtic ' tests, i.e. tests of simple powers which appeared to 

 be components of the training-activity. 



The operation selected for intensive training was modified from one 

 in the driving-chain industry. The subject sits before a small turntable. 

 It carries fixed pairs of spindles upon which links have been placed. As 

 he brings each of these in turn before him, he removes it from the turn- 

 table, dropping the link into a box at his right hand. Simultaneously he 

 takes another link from a box at his left and places it upon the pair of 

 spindles, reinstating the whole upon the turntable. He then rotates the 

 turntable, bringing the next unit into position, and repeats the whole 

 operation. 



Thirt.y-two unemployed boys aged sixteen, paid at a high piece-rate, 

 were thus trained, each for two weeks. These constituted the ' trained 

 group.' Before training, each boy's performance was measured in the 

 various tests designed to detect the presence of transfer, if any. 



These had been selected after a careful observational analysis of the 

 operation with the links and spindles. Most of them were simple tests 

 of manual dexterity, such as inserting matches in holes, filling a box with 

 matches, slijaping curtain-rings over a rod, threading links with twine, 

 reproducing from memory the angle of an arm-movement, or the force 

 with which a recording anvil had been struck by the subject's hammer, 



'^' Unpublished research in the psychological laboratories of University College, 

 London, and Manchester University. 



'^^ ' An Experimental Investigation into Transfer of Training in Skilled Per- 

 formances,' British Journal of Psychology, 18, 1928, pp. 422-37. This research was 

 made possible by financial help from the Industrial Fatigue Research Board and the 

 Lewis Scholarship in Applied Psychology. 



