Where does transfer collide?

Improving a learner on a target task by using knowledge acquired on a source task, where the domains, the label spaces, or the distributions differ. Pan and Yang's 2010 survey fixed the taxonomy: inductive, transductive, and unsupervised transfer, sorted by whether the target has labels and whether the tasks are the same. Ben-David and colleagues gave domain adaptation its theory in 2010, a bound on target error in terms of source error plus a measurable divergence between the domains. Yosinski and colleagues showed in 2014 that features in early layers of a deep network are general and later ones specific, that transferring and fine-tuning beats training from scratch, and that the benefit falls as the tasks grow apart. Pretraining then fine-tuning is now the default, and the construct is the target-task gain a source model provides.[1][2][3]

Unit

A model, from a source task or domain to a target

Recovery means

Not applicable, negative transfer is avoided by choosing the source, not undone

Measured by

Target-task accuracy with and without source pretraining; number of target examples needed; layer-wise transferability curves

The effect of learning in one situation on performance in a different one. Thorndike and Woodworth's 1901 experiments fixed the sceptical baseline: improvement carried over only where the two tasks shared identical elements, and formal discipline (the claim that Latin trains the mind) did not survive the test. Perkins and Salomon's 1989 review distinguished near from far transfer and the low road of practised automaticity from the high road of deliberate abstraction. Barnett and Ceci's 2002 taxonomy set out the dimensions along which the two contexts can differ (knowledge domain, physical, temporal, functional, and social context, modality) and concluded that far transfer is rare and often untested rather than absent. The learner is a person, and the criterion is a second task the experimenter chose.[4][5][6]

Unit

A learner, from a trained task to a target task

Recovery means

Not applicable, transfer either shows at the target task or does not

Measured by

Performance on a transfer task against an untrained control; distance along the Barnett–Ceci dimensions

The degree to which trainees apply what they learned in a programme to their work, and keep applying it. Baldwin and Ford's 1988 model fixed the construct as generalisation plus maintenance, and organised its inputs into trainee characteristics, training design, and work environment, with the environment, especially supervisor support and opportunity to use, the part the training department does not control. Blume and colleagues' 2010 meta-analysis found that cognitive ability, conscientiousness, motivation, and a supportive climate each predicted transfer, and that effects were weaker when transfer was measured by someone other than the trainee. Holton, Bates, and Ruona's 2000 Learning Transfer System Inventory measures the system around the trainee rather than the trainee. The referent is a workplace, and the criterion is behaviour observed weeks later.[7][8][9]

Unit

A trainee, from a programme to the job, over time

Recovery means

Relapse prevention, maintenance of the trained behaviour against the pull of the old routine

Measured by

Self- and supervisor-rated use of trained skills after a delay; LTSI factor scores; objective performance where available

A movement of income or value that is not payment for a good or service currently produced. In public economics a transfer payment (a pension, unemployment benefit, or welfare grant) redistributes without adding to output, and the field's question is the behavioural response: Moffitt's 2002 handbook chapter reviews how such programmes change labour supply through their benefit levels and phase-out rates. In international taxation a transfer price is what one unit of a multinational charges another for goods, services, or intangibles, and because the price is set within the firm it can move taxable profit across borders; Hines and Rice's 1994 study estimated how much American profit shifted toward low-tax jurisdictions this way. In both uses no learning moves, and the analytic interest is the incentive the transfer creates.[10][11]

Unit

A flow of income or value between parties or jurisdictions

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Programme take-up and labour-supply elasticities; reported profit relative to real activity across tax rates; arm's-length price comparisons

The patient's experience of the analyst in terms of feelings, wishes, and expectations that belong to earlier relationships, usually with parents, and are displaced onto the present one. Freud fixed the construct in 1912: transference is both the greatest obstacle to treatment, because the patient repeats rather than remembers, and its most powerful instrument, because the repetition brings the past into the room where it can be worked on. Gelso and Hayes's 1998 review carried the concept into research on the therapy relationship generally, separating transference from the real relationship and from the working alliance, and treating the analyst's countertransference as its counterpart. The unit is one relationship, in a consulting room, and the criterion is a pattern the patient did not know they were repeating.[12][13]

Unit

A patient's relationship with a clinician, over a course of treatment

Recovery means

Working through, the pattern recognised, interpreted, and loosened as the treatment proceeds

Measured by

Clinician and observer ratings of transference themes across sessions; patient reports of feelings toward the therapist

Any mode of parting with an asset or an interest in one (sale, gift, lien, or conveyance) and the point at which ownership moves. Under Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code, title to goods passes when and where the parties agree, and otherwise when the seller completes physical delivery. Insolvency law then asks which transfers can be reversed: the Uniform Voidable Transactions Act, the 2014 revision of the fraudulent-transfer statute, lets a creditor avoid a transfer made with actual intent to hinder, delay, or defraud creditors, or made for less than reasonably equivalent value while the debtor was insolvent or left with unreasonably small assets. The Supreme Court held in BFP in 1994 that the price at a properly conducted foreclosure sale counts as reasonably equivalent value. The transfer here is a legal event with a date, and the question is whether it stands.[14][15][16]

Unit

A conveyance of property or an interest in it, between a transferor and a transferee

Recovery means

Avoidance, the transfer set aside and the asset or its value recovered for the creditor

Measured by

Not measured; determined by the elements of the statute, the badges of fraud, and solvency at the date of transfer