Abstract: Three experiments had been done to examine the effect of subgoal encoding of examples on the use of principle and generalization in new problem solving.The findings showed that it was the encoding subgoal of steps of worked example that overcame the surface content effects on the use of principle,which was caused by the modification of the superficial story lines and superficial roles correspondence between examples and problems.In encoding subgoal of steps of worked example,the participants could develop the generalization of the example during the learning,so the modification of the superficial story lines and superficial roles correspondence between examples and problems had little effect on the use of principle.

Key words: subgoal, use, principle generalization