What Is a Negative Transfer?

Negative transfer generally means that one learning interferes with or inhibits another. Negative transfer usually manifests as one kind of learning increases the learning time or the number of exercises required for another kind of learning or hinders the smooth progress of another kind of learning and the correct grasp of knowledge.

Chinese name: Negative migration

Foreign name: Negative Transfer
Applied discipline: psychology

Negative migration

Negative transfer often occurs in the context of two types of learning that are similar and dissimilar. This migration will make another type of learning more difficult and increase errors.

For example, learning how Chinese pinyin interferes with learning English phonetic alphabet; Chinese learning cannot distinguish between polysemy and polyphony; incorrect use of rules for negative numbers in mathematical calculations; learning to ride a tricycle can negatively affect learning to ride a bicycle influences. The mutual interference and hindrance between these two kinds of learning belong to negative transfer. ^[1]

Negative migration performance

Negative transfer is the hindering effect of one kind of learning on another kind of learning, which is manifested in the interaction between learning new and old knowledge and mastering successive methods. ^[2]

Disturbance from negative transfer of old knowledge

The interference of old knowledge refers to the knowledge that has been mastered. For the learning of new knowledge, the formation of new skills has negative effects and adverse effects. The negative effects of old knowledge are mainly reflected in the following three processes:

1) Interfering with the comprehension of new knowledge skills. For example, if students learn decimal addition and subtraction and it is not easy to get an accounting algorithm at first, they often fail to align the decimal points and align the last digits. This is the "single digit alignment" knowledge that I learned during the addition and subtraction of integers that I learned before, which interferes with students' understanding of the rule of "alignment of decimal points".

2) Interfering with the consolidation of new knowledge and skills. The "inertia" of old knowledge and skills has affected the consolidation of new knowledge and skills. For example, students understand the knowledge of fractional fraction mutualization, and understand that some fractions can be used to reduce fractions in mixed calculations, and some fractions can be used to reduce fractions. However, when consolidating exercises, some calculations such as those encountered are negatively affected by the multiplication law Write it down so that calculations can be cumbersome.

3) Interfering with the application of new knowledge skills.

Disturbance from previous methods of negative transfer

Previously mastered methods have a negative impact on later learning and hinder the mastery of new knowledge and skills.

Disturbance of negative transfer of new knowledge

Newly learned knowledge skills will in turn affect the consolidation and application of old knowledge skills. This is the so-called "learn the back, and confuse the front". For example, after learning fraction multiplication, and then performing fraction addition and subtraction calculations, some students even use numerators and numerators, and denominators and denominators to add and subtract, respectively.

Disturbance of Negative Transfer Successor Method

The methods mastered by the learner later will also interfere with the consolidation and application of the previous knowledge. For example, students learn complex fraction application questions, master a certain method of solving the problem, and then go to the previous simple fraction application problems, but they make a mistake.

Negative migration type

According to different performance, negative migration can be summarized into three types:

1. Forward-negative transfer: refers to the interference of previous learning on subsequent learning, such as the performances 1 and 2 listed above.

2. Reverse Negative Transfer: The negative impact of subsequent learning on previous learning, such as performances 3 and 4 described above.

3. Mixed negative transfer: In a learning activity, there is both a positive negative transfer and a negative negative transfer.