TRANSFER AND INTERFERENCE AS SPECIAL GASES OF INDUCTION AND SUBSTITUTION JOHN W. OLLER, JR. A child is born with the capacity to process certain kinds of Information. As he matures he becomes able to handle more and more intricate and abstract patterns of experience and thought. At present it is not known to what extent this increase in capability is due to environmental experience or to physiological maturation. Within the last decade, an old argument has been rejuvenated concerning the sufficiency of empirical theories of learning which emphasize the context of experience in contrast with rational theories which stress the innate capacity of the learner. The difficulty of choosing sides in the dispute may be averted by noting at the outset that both the learner's innate capacity and the role of context must be dealt with by an adequate theory. In this paper I will pres^nt a summary of a theory of learning based on man's inherited ability to discriminate and categorize the elements of his experience. Within the proposed theory, I will attempt to explain transfer and interference in first and second language processing. Some implicationsforforeignlanguage program design will bediscussed briefly. The theory which I will present is based on the supposition that the rules which govern language communication are probabilistic in application 1 and pragmatic in nature. 2 By saying that the rules are pragmatic, I mean that they relate elements of experience and thought to linguistic units and sequences, and vice versa. The necessity for this premise has been discussed at some length in earlier publications so I will not attempt to xesubstantiate it here. 3 With this assumption in mind, let us consider a general theory of learning, 1 Although the assumption that linguistic rules are probabilistic in nature is contrary tö Chomskyan thinking, it has rather convincing empirical support (Clark, 1965; Morton, 1964; Coleman, 1963). This has also been noted by Prucha (1970). 2 The pragmatic nature of grammatical rules has been discussed in several earlier publications (Oller, Sales, and Harrington, 1969;· Oller and Sales, 1969; Oller, 1970; Oller, forthcoming). 3 In addition to the references of note 2, see Reichling (1961) and Uhlenbeck (1963, 1967). Brought to you by | University of Arizona Authenticated Download Date | 6/4/15 9:24 AM