Negative transfer

Negative transfer relates itself with a detrimental effect of prior experience on the learning of a new task. This is often confused with proactive interference, which concerns itself with a negative affect of prior interference on the recall of a second task.

A common test for negative transfer is the AB-AC list learning paradigm from the verbal learning research of the 1950s and 1960s. In this paradigm, two sets/lists of paired associates are learned in succession. If the second set of associations (List 2) constitutes a modification of the first set of associations (List 1), negative transfer results and thus the learning rate of the second list is slower than the first list.