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Purpose: The aim of the present study was twofold: to determine if deficits in motor skill proficiency and learning were present in 2-year-old children identified with early expressive language delay compared to peers without the delay, and to distinguish how motor skill proficiency and learning behaviors may manifest differently across culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds., Method: The study involved 54 children (24-36 months of age), 23 of whom were identified as having an expressive language delay. Furthermore, 16 participants were American and English-speaking and 38 were Israeli and Hebrew-speaking. After motor and language skill proficiency was assessed using a variety of measures, each child and participating parent were introduced to a nonsymmetrical-shaped insertion task so that motor learning skills could be observed. This block insertion task was observed for each child at three time points and included a transfer task (same task, new nonsymmetrical shape)., Results: Children with early expressive language delay were statistically significantly more likely to exhibit deficits in fine-motor proficiency than peers without language delay, regardless of country of origin or language spoken. Furthermore, participants with language delay demonstrated significantly higher error rates in transfer task completion compared with peers. Finally, participants in the U.S. sample indicated lower fine-motor skills and higher error rates than those in the Israeli sample., Conclusion: Differences in motor skill proficiency were universally associated with language delay status, indicating support for the notion that language acquisition deficits may extend beyond the linguistic system even in young children identified as late talkers.

Modern living is characterized by easy access to highly palatable energy-dense foods. Environmental cues associated with palatable foods increase seeking of those foods (specific transfer) and other palatable foods (general transfer). We conducted a series of studies testing the boundaries of food cue-reactivity by evaluating the impact of broader flavor associations (i.e. saltiness, sweetness) in eliciting general transfer effects. Experiment 1 was an online experiment with fictive rewards that tested if two actions associated with different food rewards (chip and chocolate points) could be provoked by images of other foods that were either similar or distinct in flavor from the foods associated with these instrumental actions. We observed that response excitation was only elicited by similarly flavored food cues, whereas distinctly flavored food cues inhibited response rates relative to control cues. Experiment 2 confirmed this observation in a classroom setting where real food rewards were contingent on task performance. Experiment 3 was an online study that further confirmed the reliability of the effects with a well powered sample. There were moderate-to-strong associations between specific and general transfer effects across all studies, suggesting overlapping cognitive processes are responsible for both transfer effects. These data improve the mechanistic understanding of how broad category associations can moderate the impact of food cues on food choices. This knowledge could be helpful for improving the precision of psychological interventions that seek to mitigate the impact of food cue-reactivity., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest None., (Crown Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Given the increasing prevalence of touchscreen devices that are intended for educational purposes, this study explored children's transfer of learning from touchscreen media compared with video and offline face-to-face learning. A total of 76 5- and 6-year-old Chinese kindergarten children (M = 68.21 months, SD = 3.57, range = 62-76; 30 boys and 46 girls) were randomly assigned to learn eight Chinese characters using a touchscreen-based app, using a video, or through face-to-face interaction. Learning was measured via the recall task scores, recognition task scores, recall efficiency, and recognition efficiency. The results revealed that children's recall and recognition task scores improved when learning took place using the touchscreen or face-to-face interaction. Children's recall efficiency and recognition efficiency were strongest in the face-to-face condition, followed by the touchscreen condition and then the video condition. The effects of instructional format on children's recall and recognition scores and recall efficiency were moderated by age; younger children's recall and recognition scores in the face-to-face condition and the touchscreen condition were significantly higher than in the video condition, yet older children's recall and recognition scores did not differ between conditions. However, for recall efficiency, younger children's recall efficiency in the face-to-face condition and the touchscreen condition was significantly higher than in the video condition; older children's recall efficiency in the face-to-face condition was higher than in both the touchscreen condition and the video condition. In conclusion, both face-to-face interaction and a touchscreen-based app were helpful ways for children to learn Chinese characters compared with video, but face-to-face learning showed advantages over touchscreen learning in recall efficiency for older children., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Garment transfer can wear the garment of the model image onto the personal image. As garment transfer leverages wild and cheap garment input, it has attracted tremendous attention in the community and has a huge commercial potential. Since the ground truth of garment transfer is almost unavailable in reality, previous studies have treated garment transfer as either pose transfer or garment-pose disentanglement, and trained garment transfer in self-supervised learning, However, these implementation methods do not cover garment transfer intentions completely and face the robustness issue in the testing phase. Notably, virtual try-on technology has exhibited superior performance using self-supervised learning, we propose to supervise the garment transfer training via knowledge distillation from virtual try-on. Specifically, the overall pipeline is first to infer a garment transfer parsing, and to use it to guide downstream warping and inpainting tasks. The transfer parsing reasoning model learns the response and feature knowledge from the try-on parsing reasoning model and absorbs the hard knowledge from the ground truth. The progressive flow warping model learns the content knowledge from virtual try-on for a reasonable and precise garment warping. To enhance transfer realism, we propose an arm regrowth task to infer exposed skin. Experiments demonstrate that our method has state-of-the-art performance in transferring garments between persons compared with other virtual try-on and garment transfer methods., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Fractions are the gatekeepers to advanced mathematics but are difficult to learn. One powerful learning mechanism is analogy, which builds fraction understanding on a pre-existing foundation of integer knowledge. Indeed, a short intervention that aligned fractions and integers on number lines improved children's estimates of fractions (Yu et al., 2022). The breadth and durability of such gains, however, are unknown, and analogies to other sources (such as percentages) may be equally powerful. To investigate this issue, we randomly assigned 109 fourth and fifth graders to one of three experimental conditions with different analogical sources (integers, percentages, or fractions) or a control condition. During training, children in the experimental conditions solved pairs of aligned fraction number line problems and proportionally-equivalent problems expressed in integers, percentages, or fractions (e.g., 3/8 on a 0-1 number line aligned with 3 on a 0-8 number line). Children in the control group solved fraction number-line problems sequentially. At pretest and a two-week delayed posttest, children completed a broad fraction knowledge battery, including estimation, comparison, categorization, ordering, and arithmetic. Results showed that aligning integers and fractions on number lines facilitated better estimation of fractional magnitudes, and the training effect transferred to novel fraction problems after two weeks. Similar gains were not observed for analogies using percentages. These findings highlight the importance of building new mathematical knowledge through analogies to familiar, similar sources., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Introduction: Virtual Patients (VPs) have been shown to improve various aspects of medical learning, however, research has scarcely delved into the specific factors that facilitate the knowledge gain and transfer of knowledge from the classroom to real-world applications. This exploratory study aims to understand the impact of integrating VPs into classroom learning on students' perceptions of knowledge acquisition and transfer., Methods: The study was integrated into an elective course on "Personalized Medicine in Cancer Treatment and Care," employing a qualitative and quantitative approach. Twenty-two second-year medical undergraduates engaged in a VP session, which included role modeling, practice with various authentic cases, group discussion on feedback, and a plenary session. Student perceptions of their learning were measured through surveys and focus group interviews and analyzed using descriptive statistics and thematic analysis., Results: Quantitative data shows that students highly valued the role modeling introduction, scoring it 4.42 out of 5, and acknowledged the practice with VPs in enhancing their subject matter understanding, with an average score of 4.0 out of 5. However, students' reflections on peer dialogue on feedback received mixed reviews, averaging a score of 3.24 out of 5. Qualitative analysis (of focus-group interviews) unearthed the following four themes: 'Which steps to take in clinical reasoning', 'Challenging their reasoning to enhance deeper understanding', 'Transfer of knowledge ', and ' Enhance Reasoning through Reflections'. Quantitative and qualitative data are cohered., Conclusion: The study demonstrates evidence for the improvement of learning by incorporating VPs with learning activities. This integration enhances students' perceptions of knowledge acquisition and transfer, thereby potentially elevating students' preparedness for real-world clinical settings. Key facets like expert role modeling and various authentic case exposures were valued for fostering a deeper understanding and active engagement, though with some mixed responses towards peer feedback discussions. While the preliminary findings are encouraging, the necessity for further research to refine feedback mechanisms and explore a broader spectrum of medical disciplines with larger sample sizes is underscored. This exploration lays a groundwork for future endeavors aimed at optimizing VP-based learning experiences in medical education., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Robotic assistance can improve the learning of complex motor skills. However, the assistance designed and used up to now mainly guides motor commands for trajectory learning, not dynamics learning. The present study explored how a complex motor skill involving the right arm can be learned without suppressing task dynamics, by means of an innovative device with robotic guidance that allows a torque versus motion profile to be learned with admittance control. In addition, we assessed how concurrent visual feedback on this profile can enhance learning without creating dependency, by means of a fading procedure (i.e., feedback reduction across trials). On Day 1, a Control group performed an acquisition session (6 blocks) featuring concurrent visual feedback, while a Fading group performed the session with a gradual reduction in feedback (from 100% to 0% over the 6 blocks). On Day 2, both groups performed a block first without feedback (i.e., Transfer test), then with feedback (i.e., Retention test). Results revealed that on Day 1, movement rehearsal induced a significant improvement in spatiotemporal parameters for the Control group, compared with the Fading group. On Day 2, the opposite was found when this visual feedback was removed, as the Fading group performed significantly better than the Control group on the Transfer test. Vision allows a relationship to be established between the required torque and the motion profile. Its suppression then forces the processing of more intrinsic information, leading to the development of a stable internal representation of the task., (Copyright © 2023. Published by Elsevier B.V.)

Purpose: This study aims to investigate whether the treatment effects, in terms of goal attainment, transfer effects and impact on executive functions, of an intervention in children with cerebral palsy or spina bifida using the Cognitive Orientation to daily Occupational Performance (CO-OP) Approach are maintained over time, from immediately after the intervention to three months afterwards., Method: A three-month follow-up study, from an intervention using CO-OP. Thirty-four children (7-16 years) each identified four goals (one untrained to examine transfer) and participated in an eleven-session intervention. Assessments were performed at baseline, immediately after the intervention and at a three-month follow-up using the Canadian Occupational Performance Measure and the Performance Quality Rating Scale. Executive function and self-rated competence were assessed at the same timepoints., Results: Statistically significant and clinically relevant improvements in goal achievement were demonstrated for both trained and untrained goals after the intervention and were maintained at follow-up. The clinically relevant improvement in untrained goals continued to increase until follow-up. Self-rated competence increased after the intervention and was maintained at follow-up., Conclusion: The CO-OP intervention was effective in achieving and maintaining the children's own goals over time. The transfer effect was confirmed by higher goal attainment for the untrained goals.

Background: Acquired brain injury (ABI) often leads to persisting somatic, cognitive, and social impairments. Cognitive impairments of processing speed, sustained attention, and working memory are frequently reported and may negatively affect activities of daily living and quality of life. Rehabilitation efforts aiming to retrain these cognitive functions have often consisted of computerized training programs. However, few studies have demonstrated effects that transfer beyond the trained tasks. There is a growing optimism regarding the potential usefulness of virtual reality (VR) in cognitive rehabilitation. The research literature is sparse, and existing studies are characterized by considerable methodological weaknesses. There is also a lack of knowledge about the acceptance and tolerability of VR as an intervention method for people with ABI. The present study aims to investigate whether playing a commercially available VR game is effective in training cognitive functions after ABI and to explore if the possible effects transfer into everyday functioning., Methods: One hundred participants (18-65 years), with a verified ABI, impairments of processing speed/attention, and/or working memory, and a minimum of 12 months post injury will be recruited. Participants with severe aphasia, apraxia, visual neglect, epilepsy, and severe mental illness will be excluded. Participants will be randomized into two parallel groups: (1) an intervention group playing a commercial VR game taxing processing speed, working memory, and sustained attention; (2) an active control group receiving psychoeducation regarding compensatory strategies, and general cognitive training tasks such as crossword puzzles or sudoku. The intervention period is 5 weeks. The VR group will be asked to train at home for 30 min 5 days per week. Each participant will be assessed at baseline with neuropsychological tests and questionnaires, after the end of the intervention (5 weeks), and 16 weeks after baseline. After the end of the intervention period, focus group interviews will be conducted with 10 of the participants in the intervention group, in order to investigate acceptance and tolerability of VR as a training method., Discussion: This study will contribute to improve understanding of how VR is tolerated and experienced by the ABI population. If proven effective, the study can contribute to new rehabilitation methods that persons with ABI can utilize in a home setting, after the post-acute rehabilitation has ended., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

People who take on challenges and persevere longer are more likely to succeed in life. But individuals often avoid exerting effort, and there is limited experimental research investigating whether we can learn to value effort. We developed a paradigm to test the hypothesis that people can learn to value effort and will seek effortful challenges if directly incentivized to do so. We also dissociate the effects of rewarding people for choosing effortful challenges and performing well. The results provide limited evidence that rewarding effort increased people's willingness to choose harder tasks when rewards were no longer offered (near transfer). There was also mixed evidence that rewarding effort increased willingness to choose harder tasks in another unrelated and unrewarded task (far transfer). These heterogeneous results highlight the need for further research to understand when this paradigm may be the most effective for increasing and generalizing the value of effort., (© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.)

Background: Some researchers have questioned whether artificial intelligence (AI) systems maintain their performance when used for women from populations not considered during the development of the system., Purpose: To evaluate the impact of transfer learning as a way of improving the generalization of AI systems in the detection of breast cancer., Material and Methods: This retrospective case-control Finnish study involved 191 women diagnosed with breast cancer and 191 matched healthy controls. We selected a state-of-the-art AI system for breast cancer detection trained using a large US dataset. The selected baseline system was evaluated in two experimental settings. First, we examined our private Finnish sample as an independent test set that had not been considered in the development of the system (unseen population). Second, the baseline system was retrained to attempt to improve its performance in the unseen population by means of transfer learning. To analyze performance, we used areas under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUCs) with DeLong's test., Results: Two versions of the baseline system were considered: ImageOnly and Heatmaps. The ImageOnly and Heatmaps versions yielded mean AUC values of 0.82±0.008 and 0.88±0.003 in the US dataset and 0.56 (95% CI=0.50-0.62) and 0.72 (95% CI=0.67-0.77) when evaluated in the unseen population, respectively. The retrained systems achieved AUC values of 0.61 (95% CI=0.55-0.66) and 0.69 (95% CI=0.64-0.75), respectively. There was no statistical difference between the baseline system and the retrained system., Conclusion: Transfer learning with a small study sample did not yield a significant improvement in the generalization of the system., Competing Interests: Declaration of conflicting interestsThe authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

The existence of transfer effects of video games on cognitive performance are controversially discussed in experimental psychology. Whereas recent meta-analyses suggest the absence of far transfer effects, empirical evidence regarding near transfer effects is more controversial. This conceptual replication investigated the short-term near transfer effect of playing Tetris on mental rotation abilities. The design of the conceptual replication was based on a comprehensive compilation of the methods used by previous literature on this topic and advanced in order to reach a high scientific state-of-the-art standard. We ran a high-powered conceptual replication study with 366 participants randomly assigned to either an experimental group playing Tetris or a control group playing Solitaire. Both groups completed three commonly used mental rotation tests in a pre- and a posttest session. Additionally, the experimental group played Tetris while the control group played Solitaire. Playing time was 10 hours in total within 4 weeks. Based on previous research, we hypothesized that this might generate a short-term transfer effect of Tetris on mental rotation. While participants showed a repeated testing effect for the mental rotation tests in both groups, we found evidence that Tetris does not produce a short-term transfer effect on mental rotation. Both gender and expected outcomes did not influence this effect. Our study suggests that playing Tetris does not improve mental rotation skills., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

A large number of recent studies have demonstrated that efficient attentional selection depends to a large extent on the ability to extract regularities present in the environment. Through statistical learning, attentional selection is facilitated by directing attention to locations in space that were relevant in the past while suppressing locations that previously were distracting. The current study shows that we are not only able to learn to prioritize locations in space but also locations within objects independent of space. Participants learned that within a specific object, particular locations within the object were more likely to contain relevant information than other locations. The current results show that this learned prioritization was bound to the object as the learned bias to prioritize a specific location within the object stayed in place even when the object moved to a completely different location in space. We conclude that in addition to spatial attention prioritization of locations in space, it is also possible to learn to prioritize relevant locations within specific objects. The current findings have implications for the inferred spatial priority map of attentional weights as this map cannot be strictly retinotopically organized., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

All anatomical educators hope that students apply past training to both similar and new tasks. This two-group longitudinal study investigated the development of such transfer of learning in a histology course. After 0, 10, and 20 sessions of the 10-week-long course, medical students completed theoretical tasks, examined histological slides trained in the course (retention task), and unfamiliar histological slides (transfer task). The results showed that students in the histology group gradually outperformed the control group in all tasks, especially in the second half of the course, η 2  = 0.268 (p < 0.001). The best predictor of final transfer performance was students' retention performance after 10 sessions, β = 0.32 (p = 0.028), and theoretical knowledge after 20 sessions, β = 0.46 (p = 0.003). Results of eye tracking methodology further revealed that the histology group engaged in greater "visual activity" when solving transfer tasks, as indicated by an increase in the total fixation count, η 2  = 0.103 (p = 0.014). This longitudinal study provides evidence that medical students can use what they learn in histology courses to solve unfamiliar problems but cautions that positive transfer effects develop relatively late in the course. Thus, course time and the complex relationship between theory, retention, and transfer holds critical implications for anatomical curricula seeking to foster the transfer of learning., (© 2023 The Authors. Anatomical Sciences Education published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Association for Anatomy.)

When we intensively train a timing skill, such as learning to play the piano, we not only produce brain changes associated with task-specific learning but also improve our performance in other temporal behaviors that depend on these tuned neural resources. Since the neural basis of time learning and generalization is still unknown, we measured the changes in neural activity associated with the transfer of learning from perceptual to motor timing in a large sample of subjects ( n  = 65; 39 women). We found that intense training in an interval discrimination task increased the acuity of time perception in a group of subjects that also exhibited learning transfer, expressed as a reduction in inter-tap interval variability during an internally driven periodic motor task. In addition, we found subjects with no learning and/or generalization effects. Notably, functional imaging showed an increase in pre-supplementary motor area and caudate-putamen activity between the post- and pre-training sessions of the tapping task. This increase was specific to the subjects that generalized their timing acuity from the perceptual to the motor context. These results emphasize the central role of the cortico-basal ganglia circuit in the generalization of timing abilities between tasks., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing financial interests., (Copyright © 2024 the authors.)

We aimed to investigate transfer of learning, whereby previously acquired skills impact new task learning. While it has been debated whether such transfer may yield positive, negative, or no effects on performance, very little is known about the underlying neural mechanisms, especially concerning the role of inhibitory (GABA) and excitatory (Glu) (measured as Glu + glutamine (Glx)) neurometabolites, as measured by magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS). Participants practiced a bimanual coordination task across four days. The Experimental group trained a task variant with the right hand moving faster than the left (Task A) for three days and then switched to the opposite variant (Task B) on Day4. The control group trained Task B across four days. MRS data were collected before, during, and after task performance on Day4 in the somatosensory (S1) and visual (MT/V5) cortex. Results showed that both groups improved performance consistently across three days. On Day4, the Experimental group experienced performance decline due to negative task transfer while the control group continuously improved. GABA and Glx concentrations obtained during task performance showed no significant group-level changes. However, individual Glx levels during task performance correlated with better (less negative) transfer performance. These findings provide a first window into the neurochemical mechanisms underlying task transfer., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

The objective of this study was to propose a novel strategy for detecting upper-limb motion intentions from mechanical sensor signals using deep and heterogeneous transfer learning techniques. Three sensor types, surface electromyography (sEMG), force-sensitive resistors (FSRs), and inertial measurement units (IMUs), were combined to capture biometric signals during arm-up, hold, and arm-down movements. To distinguish motion intentions, deep learning models were constructed using the CIFAR-ResNet18 and CIFAR-MobileNetV2 architectures. The input features of the source models were sEMG, FSR, and IMU signals. The target model was trained using only FSR and IMU sensor signals. Optimization techniques determined appropriate layer structures and learning rates of each layer for effective transfer learning. The source model on CIFAR-ResNet18 exhibited the highest performance, achieving an accuracy of 95% and an F-1 score of 0.95. The target model with optimization strategies performed comparably to the source model, achieving an accuracy of 93% and an F-1 score of 0.93. The results show that mechanical sensors alone can achieve performance comparable to models including sEMG. The proposed approach can serve as a convenient and precise algorithm for human-robot collaboration in rehabilitation assistant robots.

Objectives: This study examined the possible correlation between metacognition and learning experience transfer of nursing students after engaging in an urgent and cognitively demanding clinical situation., Methods: This is a one-group post-test- only study design in which participants engaged in an emergency care scenario simulation and completed the Meta-Cognitive Awareness Scale - Domain Specific (MCAS-DS)., Results: Study results revealed that participants' metacognitive awareness is significantly correlated to the learning transfer (p=0.0001) and GPA (p=0.006). There is also a positive correlation between learning transfer and GPA (p=0.04), clinical settings-based training experience (p=0.021) and metacognitive confidence (p=0.0001)., Conclusions: This study may imply that academic achievement can be used as a potential screening tool to identify students requiring metacognitive training. It may also imply that metacognitive abilities can be enhanced indirectly through considering factors that may influence the transfer of learning such as increasing the hours of clinical training., (© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston.)

Museum-based education for health professionals is a rich and expanding field in which educators engage health professions learners in arts-based activities intentionally designed to support transfer of learning from a museum to a clinical context. Museum-based education for health professionals promotes several key learning outcomes including: mastery of core skills such as observation, interpretation, and communication; cultivating personal insight; fostering appreciation for multiple perspectives; opening avenues to explore social advocacy; and promoting wellness. Following a museum-based activity, translational facilitators guide learners through a debriefing process which supports the discovery of real-world connections to clinical teaching, learning, and care delivery. Translational debriefing involves practices such as attending to psychological safety, using reflective listening and open-ended questions, practicing cultural humility, maintaining neutrality, and modeling curiosity. These translational opportunities can also help participants who are themselves health professions educators gain insights into their own teaching practices and provide new tools to incorporate, including bedside teaching strategies and innovative ways to facilitate small group learning.

We hypothesized that a three-sample conditional discrimination can emerge as a result of learning conditional discriminations with relational stimuli. After learning three first-order conditional discriminations AB, PQ, and CD, we taught a second-order conditional discrimination XAB in which X1 indicated selection of related stimuli (e.g., A1 and B1) and X2 of unrelated stimuli (e.g., A1 and B2). Then, we probed the emergence of conditional discriminations PQX and XCD in which the X stimuli were comparisons and contextual stimuli, respectively. Finally, a conditional discrimination was probed with stimuli P, Q, and C as samples and D1 and D2 as comparisons. When the P and Q stimuli were related (and related to X1 in PQX), all participants selected the D stimulus that was related to the C stimulus (D1 when C1 was present and D2 when C2 was present); when the P and Q stimuli were unrelated (and related to X2 in PQX), they selected the D stimulus unrelated to the C stimulus (D2 when C1 and D1 when C2), which demonstrated emergence based on the relations established among all stimuli. In Experiment 2, the teaching of XAB was omitted and only one in six participants demonstrated emergence, which indicated that relational stimuli X1 and X2 played an important role in emergence. Thus, a new type of emergence that mimics analogical reasoning was demonstrated. The obtained outcome suggests that this procedure provides a learning foundation for acquiring reasoning capabilities., (© 2023 The Authors. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior.)

The evolution of virtual reality (VR) has created the opportunity for a relatively low-cost and accessible method to practice motor skills. Previous studies have demonstrated how motor skill practice in non-immersive virtual environments transfers to physical environments. Though minimal research has investigated motor learning and transfer within immersive VR, multiple experiments provide empirical evidence of positive transfer effects. Most studies have used software engines and modified hardware to enhance the similarities between virtual and physical environments. However, many learners and practitioners currently use commercially available VR intending to enhance real-world performance, though there is very little evidence to support the notion of positive transfer for these systems. Therefore, this experiment aimed to investigate how motor skill practice using a commercially available VR system improved real-world performance and how that compared to physical practice. Participants (n = 68) were randomly selected into one of two groups: virtual reality (VR) practice (n = 33) or real-world (RW) practice (n = 35). The experiment occurred over two consecutive days, with a pretest, posttest, and practice phase occurring each day. The pre- and post-testing phases were identical for both groups and consisted of putting a golf ball 10 times on a carpeted surface towards the center of a target. The practice phases consisted of 60 total putts per day in the respective environment (VR or RW). Participants continuously alternated golf putting holes from three different distances until they accrued 60 total putts. Participants in the RW group performed golf putts to three targets. Participants in the VR group also performed golf putts on three different miniature golf putting holes, using the commercially available Oculus Rift and the Cloudlands VR Minigolf game. The VR putting targets were designed to replicate the putting holes in the physical environment. Separate 2 (group) x 4 (test) repeated measures ANOVAs were used to assess accuracy and club head kinematics. The results revealed a significant main effect for test, but not for group. Post hoc analyses revealed that both groups significantly improved their putting accuracy and club head kinematics at similar rates. The results from this study indicate that the transfer of learning that occurred as a result of practicing in a commercially available VR environment was similarly effective when compared to RW practice., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2023 Markwell et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Transfer of learning refers to successful application of previously acquired knowledge or skills to novel settings. Although working memory (WM) is thought to play a role in transfer learning, direct evidence of the effect of limitations in WM on transfer learning is lacking. To investigate, we used an acquired equivalence paradigm that included tests of association and transfer learning. The effects of imposing an acute WM limitation on young adults was tested (within-subjects design: N = 27 adults; M age  = 24 years) by conducting learning transfer tests concurrent with a secondary task that required carrying a spatial WM load when performing the learned/transfer trial (Load condition) to acutely limit WM resources or no WM load (No-Load condition; WM was unloaded prior to performing the learned/transfer trial). Analyses showed that although success on the transfer trials was high in the No-Load condition, performance dropped to chance in the Load condition. Performance on tests of learned associations remained high in both conditions. These results indicate that transfer of learning depends on access to WM resources and suggest that even healthy young individuals may be affected in their ability to cross-utilize knowledge when cognitive resources become scarce, such as when engaging in two tasks simultaneously (e.g., using satellite navigation while driving)., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

Gathercole et al. (Journal of Memory and Language, 105, 19-42, 2019) presented a cognitive routine framework for explaining the underlying mechanisms of working memory (WM) training and transfer. This framework conceptualizes training-induced changes as the acquisition of novel cognitive routines similar to learning a new skill. We further infer that WM training might not always generate positive outcomes because previously acquired routines may affect subsequent task performance in various ways. Thus, the present study aimed to demonstrate the negative effects of WM training via two experiments. We conducted Experiment 1 online using a two-phase training paradigm with only three training sessions per phase and replicated the key findings of Gathercole and Norris (in prep.) that training on a backward circle span task (a spatial task) transferred negatively to subsequent training on a backward letter span task (a verbal task). We conducted Experiment 2 using a reversed task order design corresponding to Experiment 1. The results indicated that the transfer from backward letter training to backward circle training was not negative, but rather weakly positive, suggesting that the direction of the negative transfer effect is asymmetric. The present study therefore found that a negative transfer effect can indeed occur under certain WM training designs. The presence of this asymmetric effect indicates that backward circle and backward letter tasks require different optimal routines and that the locus of negative transfer might be the acquisition process of such optimal routines. Hence, the routines already established for backward circle might hinder the development of optimal routines for backward letter, but not vice versa., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

Rapid force production and its transmission to the skeleton are important factors in movements that involve the stretch-shortening cycle. Plyometric exercises are known to augment this cycle and thereby improve the neuromechanical function of the muscle. However, the training exercises that maximize translation of these gains to sports performance are not well defined. We discuss ways to improve this transfer., (Copyright © 2023 by the American College of Sports Medicine.)

ABSTRACT Making judgments of learning (JOLs) can reactively change memory, a phenomenon termed the reactivity effect . The current study was designed to explore whether the reactivity effect transfers to subsequent learning of new information. Participants studied two blocks of words (Experiment 1) or related word pairs (Experiments 2 & 3). In Block 1, participants in the experimental (JOL) group made a JOL while studying each item, whereas the control (no-JOL) group did not make item-by-item JOLs. Then both groups studied Block 2, in which they did not make JOLs, and finally, they took a test on Blocks 1 and 2. Across Experiments 1 -3, the results showed superior Block 1 test performance in the JOL than in the no-JOL group, demonstrating a positive reactivity effect. Critically, there was minimal difference in Block 2 test performance between the two groups, implying little transfer of the positive reactivity effect to subsequent learning of new information. Furthermore, Experiment 3 demonstrated that the reactivity effect still failed to transfer even when participants explicitly appreciated the benefits of making JOLs. Educational implications are discussed.

Crossmodal transfer of learning is a neurocognitive process whereby a learner's experience and knowledge acquired through one sensory mode enable him/her to perform a similar task using a different sensory mode. This study examined the transfer of (mostly) visually acquired knowledge of first- and second-language characters to the tactile modality typically not used in that acquisition process. Two experiments were conducted, one to assess letter recognition skills and one to assess digit recognition skills in both Bangla and English, in 30 sighted young children who had mastered those characters through sensory learning in natural settings. Results unequivocally demonstrated that children were able to recognize/classify the first and second language letters or digits presented not only to the (trained) visual modality but to the (untrained) tactile modality as well, and as expected, with greater recognition accuracy and shorter recognition time in the former than the latter modality. Their character recognition performance was found to be significantly influenced not by language but by character type, with digits being more accurately and more speedily recognized than letters. Moreover, language-task modality interaction was found to mediate letter recognition accuracy, digit recognition accuracy, and digit recognition time, whereas character type-task modality interaction was found to significantly mediate character recognition time only. The ecological and theoretical significance of these findings is discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Aim: The aim of this integrative review was to examine the theoretical, qualitative, quantitative and mixed-methods literature focused on how nursing students transfer learning from theory courses into clinical practice., Background: As nursing curriculum aligns with the growing body of nursing knowledge, nursing students continue to develop their knowledge base and skill sets to prepare for future nursing practice. The bulk of this preparation involves developing connections between classroom/lab knowledge and further demonstrating those connections in clinical practice. However, the extant state of evidence on undergraduate nursing students' learning transfer has not yet been synthesized., Design: This integrative review was conducted using the Whittemore and Knafl framework., Review Methods: Eight databases were searched in June 2022: MEDLINE, APA PsycInfo, EMBASE, Web of Science, CINAHL, ERIC, Academic Search Complete and Education Research Complete. Literature was included if it focused on undergraduate nursing students who have participated in at least one clinical practicum and reported on learning transfer in clinical settings. Only English-language, peer-reviewed literature was included. Two researchers independently assessed the eligibility of articles at the title-and-abstract level and at the full-text level, followed by an assessment of methodological quality. The Joanna Briggs Institute's critical appraisal checklists were used to assess theoretical papers and literature reviews and the mixed-methods appraisal tool (MMAT) was used to appraise all studies. Reference lists of included articles were searched for additional relevant literature. Reporting followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses statement guidelines., Results: Twenty-eight articles met our inclusion criteria and were included in this review, including 20 qualitative studies, one quantitative study, three mixed-methods studies, three theoretical articles and one integrative review. The results of this review highlighted that numerous facilitators and barriers influence nursing students' ability to transfer learning within clinical learning environments. Facilitators included having knowledgeable and supportive educators and nursing staff, using strategies to promote connections, fostering reflection and aligning theory and practice. Barriers included unclear connections between course content, incongruencies between classroom and practice, lack of nurse role models, lack of real-world applicability and unsupportive nurse educators., Conclusions: The information generated from this integrative review provides evidence about barriers that can be mitigated and facilitators that can be leveraged to facilitate undergraduate nursing students' learning transfer into clinical practice. The findings also highlighted gaps in evidence surrounding the need to understand how nursing students transfer learning from classroom settings to clinical practice settings., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)