Strategy Transfer on Fluid Reasoning Tasks

Strategy use on reasoning tasks has consistently been shown to correlate with working memory capacity and accuracy, but it is still unclear to what degree individual preferences, working memory capacity, and features of the task itself contribute to strategy use. The present studies used eye tracking to explore the potential for strategy transfer between reasoning tasks. Study 1 demonstrated that participants are consistent in what strategy they use across reasoning tasks and that strategy transfer between tasks is possible. Additionally, post-hoc analyses identified certain ambiguous items in the figural analogies task that required participants to assess the response bank to reach solution, which appeared to push participants towards a more response-based strategy. Study 2 utilized a between-subjects design to manipulate this “ambiguity” in figural analogies problems prior to completing the RAPM. Once again, participants transferred strategies between tasks when primed with different strategies, although this did not affect their ability to accurately solve the problem. Importantly, strategy use changed considerably depending on the ambiguity of the initial reasoning task. The results provided across the two studies suggest that participants are consistent in what strategies they employ across reasoning tasks, and that if features of the task push participants towards a different strategy, they will transfer that strategy to another reasoning task. Furthermore, to understand the role of strategy use on reasoning tasks, future work will require a diverse sample of both reasoning tasks and strategy use measures.