[quoting Quinn, 3 Mar 97] An idea I've been toying with is that you may need two vastly different contexts to facilitate abstraction. As in the analogy research of Gick & Holyoak, when it took presentations of two vastly different examples of a solution before transfer significantly improved. Thus Mud Ponies AND ZoomWands.
I think I agree, Clark. We learned 20 years ago that to get transfer in concept learning you need a range of close-in negative, and far-out positive examples. It's probably reasonable to expect the same requirement with procedural knowledge. But I'd be hesitant to predict much transfer if all the examples were fantasy contexts. Of course, there's a place for fantasy in life and in instruction, but there better be some multiple realistic contexts in there too.
Unless you intend to hold off all your transfer of learning until you reach Gamma Quadrant.