Advice and Feedback: Elements of Practice for Problem Solving

Abstract Training programs typically provide an opportunity for practice and study with informational feedback being provided to facilitate acquisition. Within the context of training persons to use strategic transfer (Phye, 1992) as a tool, two studies were conducted. The roles of advice and feedback in the facilitation of on-line processing during acquisition and subsequent impact on memory-based processing during a delayed problem solving task (Phye, 1990) were studied. Results indicate that corrective feedback improves on-line processing during training and is reflected in acquisition performance and delayed retention. This finding with problem-solving tasks replicates prior research on corrective feedback with declarative knowledge. However, corrective feedback is not superior to advice in terms of influencing memory-based processing on a delayed problem-solving task requiring the use of strategic transfer as a tool.