Putting category learning in order: Category structure and temporal arrangement affect the benefit of interleaved over blocked study

Carvalho, Paulo F.; Goldstone, Robert L.

doi:10.3758/s13421-013-0371-0

Cited by 133 publications

(245 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…This result parallels previous evidence (e.g., Shea and Morgan, 1979; Carvalho and Goldstone, 2014a) showing a benefit of blocked study during study. However, this study advantage does not always transfer to an equivalent advantage of blocked study during test.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 91%

Effects of interleaved and blocked study on delayed test of category learning generalization

Carvalho

Goldstone

2014

Front. Psychol.

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Studying different concepts by frequently alternating between them (i.e., interleaving), improves discriminative contrast between different categories, while studying each concept in separate blocks emphasizes the similarities within each category. Interleaved study has been shown to improve learning of high similarity categories by increasing between-category comparison, while blocked study improves learning of low similarity categories by increasing within-category comparison. In addition, interleaved study presents greater temporal spacing between repetitions of each category compared to blocked study, which might present long-term memory benefits. In this study we asked if the benefits of temporal spacing would interact with the benefits of sequencing for making comparisons when testing was delayed, particularly for low similarity categories. Blocked study might be predicted to promote noticing similarities across members of the same category and result in short-term benefits. However, the increase in temporal delay between repetitions inherent to interleaved study might benefit both types of categories when tested after a longer retention interval. Participants studied categories either interleaved or blocked and were tested immediately and 24 h after study. We found an interaction between schedule of study and the type of category studied, which is consistent with the differential emphasis promoted by each sequential schedule. However, increasing the retention interval did not modulate this interaction or resulted in improved performance for interleaved study. Overall, this indicates that the benefit of interleaving is not primarily due to temporal spacing during study, but rather due to the cross-category comparisons that interleaving facilitates. We discuss the benefits of temporal spacing of repetitions in the context of sequential study and how it can be integrated with the attentional bias hypothesis proposed by Carvalho and Goldstone (2014a).

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 91%

Effects of interleaved and blocked study on delayed test of category learning generalization

Carvalho

Goldstone

2014

Front. Psychol.

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“…Thus, presenting objects that belong to different categories simultaneously, or close in time, can also boost learning (Carvalho & Goldstone, 2014;Gentner & Markman, 1994). In the context of geology instruction, for example, Jee, Uttal, and Gentner (2008) demonstrated that studying two highly similar examples that differ only in terms of the presence of a Bfault^improves learning of that concept.…”

Section: Electronic Supplementary Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Organized simultaneous displays facilitate learning of complex natural science categories

et al. 2017

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Subjects learned to classify images of rocks into the categories igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary. In accord with the real-world structure of these categories, the to-beclassified rocks in the experiments had a dispersed similarity structure. Our central hypothesis was that learning of these complex categories would be improved through observational study of organized, simultaneous displays of the multiple rock tokens. In support of this hypothesis, a technique that included the presentation of the simultaneous displays during phases of the learning process yielded improved acquisition (Experiment 1) and generalization (Experiment 2) compared to methods that relied solely on sequential forms of study and testing. The technique appears to provide a good starting point for application of cognitive-psychology principles of effective category learning to the science classroom.

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“…For example, in these studies (e.g., Zulkiply and Burt, 2013; Carvalho and Goldstone, 2014), discriminability within and between categories is manipulated by changing number of times (i.e., frequency) that relevant and/or irrelevant category features co-occurred at each category exemplar presentation. These studies have demonstrated that spaced/interleaved schedules promote generalization performance for low-discriminability categories, but perhaps not high-discriminability categories.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Temporal dynamics of categorization: forgetting as the basis of abstraction and generalization

Vlach

Kalish

2014

Front. Psychol.

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Historically, models of categorization have focused on how learners track frequencies and co-occurrence information to abstract relevant category features for generalization. The current study takes a different approach by examining how the temporal dynamics of categorization affect abstraction and generalization. In the learning phase of the experiment, all relevant category features were presented an equal number of times across category exemplars. However, the relevant features were presented on one of two learning schedules: massed or interleaved. At a series of immediate and delayed tests, learners were asked to generalize to novel exemplars that contained massed features, interleaved features, or all novel features. The results of this experiment revealed that, at an immediate test, learners more readily generalized based upon features presented on a massed schedule. Conversely, at a delayed test, learners more readily generalized based upon features presented on an interleaved schedule, until information was no longer readily retrievable from memory. These findings suggest that forgetting and retrieval processes engendered by the temporal dynamics of learning are used as a basis of abstraction, implicating forgetting as a central mechanism of generalization.

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Putting category learning in order: Category structure and temporal arrangement affect the benefit of interleaved over blocked study

Cited by 133 publications

References 52 publications

Effects of interleaved and blocked study on delayed test of category learning generalization

Effects of interleaved and blocked study on delayed test of category learning generalization

Organized simultaneous displays facilitate learning of complex natural science categories

Temporal dynamics of categorization: forgetting as the basis of abstraction and generalization

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