Bland and faraway bugs: Does the effect of perceptual richness on transfer depend on the semantic distance of the test items?

One reason to include diagrams or other visualizations in lessons is that they promote not only learning but also transfer. Theories of transfer ague that people are more likely to transfer knowledge to a new scenario the more similar the scenario is to what they have previously learned. However, prior research predominantly relies on expert- or researcher-based categories of how similar two scenarios are. In two studies (N total = 483) with undergraduate students in the United States, I showed how using learner-based similarity judgments can provide new insights on transfer. Participants learned about metamorphosis using either perceptually rich or bland life cycle diagrams. After the lesson, they completed comprehension questions, an immediate posttest, and a one-month delayed posttest. Participants also sorted the stimuli in the posttest based on their similarity either at the beginning (Study 1) or the end of the session (Study 2). The results of both studies and an Individual Person Data (IDP) analysis shows consistent results when using the participants’ similarity judgements to predict transfer. Participants were more likely to extend their knowledge to animals similar to the ladybug when they learned with the rich diagram, but to dissimilar animals when they learned with the bland diagram. This was consistent after the one-month delay. The results using research-based categories were less consistent, and the IPD shows that more participants were needed to find converging findings. This highlights the need to operationalize transfer based on learner perspectives rather than expert judgments.