The situation perspective: specific vs. general, near vs. far transfer
The situation-driven perspective on transfer taxonomies is concerned with describing the relation between transfer source (i.e., the prior experience) and transfer target (i.e., the novel situation). In other words, the notion of novelty of the target situation per se is worthless without specifying the degree of novelty in relation to something that existed before. Butterfield and Nelson (1991), for example, distinguish between within-task, across-task, and inventive transfer. A similar classification approach reappears in many situation-driven transfer taxonomies (e.g., similar vs. different situations, example-to-principle and vice versa, simple-to-complex and vice versa) and can be noted as distinctions made along the specific vs. general dimension. Mayer and Wittrock (1996, pp. 49ff.) discuss transfer under the labels of general "transfer of general skill" (e.g., "Formal Discipline", Binet, 1899), "specific transfer of specific skill" (e.g., Thorndike’s, 1924a, b, "identical elements" theory), "specific transfer of general skill" (e.g., Gestaltists' transfer theory, see origins with Judd, 1908), and "meta-cognitive control of general and specific skills" as a sort of combination of the previous three views (see, e.g., Brown, 1989).
Haskell's (2001) taxonomy proposes a more gradual scheme of similarity between tasks and situations. It distinguishes