The effects of interleaved practice

Abstract

Previous research shows that interleaving rather than blocking practice of different skills (e.g. abcbcacab instead of aaabbbccc) usually improves subsequent test performance. Yet interleaving, but not blocking, ensures that practice of any particular skill is distributed, or spaced, because any two opportunities to practice the same task are not consecutive. Hence, because spaced practice typically improves test performance, the previously observed test benefits of interleaving may be due to spacing rather than interleaving per se. In the experiment reported herein, children practiced four kinds of mathematics problems in an order that was interleaved or blocked, and the degree of spacing was fixed. The interleaving of practice impaired practice session performance yet doubled scores on a test given one day later. An analysis of the errors suggested that interleaving boosted test scores by improving participants' ability to pair each problem with the appropriate procedure.When practice is interleaved rather than blocked, the practice of different skills is intermixed rather than grouped by type (e.g. abcbcacab instead of aaabbbccc). In most introductory statistics textbooks, for example, the practice problems requiring a particular statistical test (e.g. independent samples t test) are blocked together in a set that typically follows the lesson on that statistical test. With interleaved practice, by contrast, each lesson is followed by a set of practice problems drawn from many previous lessons so that no two problems of the same kind appear consecutively, thereby requiring students to choose the appropriate statistical test on the basis of the problem itself. Several studies have shown that interleaving yields better subsequent test performance than does blocking. In these studies, however, practice in the interleaving condition was distributed or spaced, and, as detailed below, this confound worked in favour of the observed benefits of interleaving. The present study assessed the effects of interleaving while equating the degree of spacing.

Why interleaving enhances inductive learning: The roles of discrimination and retrieval

“…This implication may extend well beyond visual categories of the type employed in the present studies. Taylor and Rohrer (2010), for example, asked students to learn four kinds of mathematics problems using a task that could be categorized as requiring inductive learning, because participants never saw the same problem twice during the learning phase. Taylor and Rohrer found that interleaving enhanced learning-as measured by the ability to solve new examples of each type of problem on a delayed test-even when the amount of spacing had been the same in the interleaved and blocked conditions.…”

“…There may be situations in which it is advantageous to block such learning trials, as has been demonstrated using artificial laboratory tasks, particularly when it is difficult to discern similarities among the exemplars of a category. In the case of naturalistic categories, however, the data thus far are fairly unanimous in demonstrating the benefits of interleaving over blocking (Kang & Pashler, 2012;Kornell & Bjork, 2008;Kornell et al, 2010;Taylor & Rohrer, 2010;Wahlheim et al, 2011;Zulkiply & Burt, in press;Zulkiply et al, 2012).…”

What is made possible to learn when using the variation theory of learning in teaching mathematics?

“…The benefits of using multiple examples rather than only one example in mathematics education, in regard to student learning, have been argued by several scholars (e.g., (Hatala et al 2003;Kornell and Bjork 2008;Rohrer and Pashler 2010;Schmidt and Bjork 1992;Taylor and Rohrer 2010). When different types of tasks or examples are mixed, the learners are forced to distinguish between them and thus get better at making sense of novel tasks and examples.…”

The effects of interleaving versus blocking on foreign language pronunciation learning

“…Other studies have reported benefits of interleaving on the learning of geometric concepts (e.g., Taylor & Rohrer, 2010) and algebraic rules (e.g., Mayfield & Chase, 2002). A small but growing number of studies has also reported benefits of interleaving for other types of cognitive and motor tasks as well (for reviews, see Dunlosky, Rawson, Marsh, Nathan, & Willingham, 2013;Rohrer, 2012).…”

“…Students worked through practice problems in an order that was either blocked by type of figure (i.e., all problems pertaining to one type of figure were finished before the student moved on to the next type of figure) or interleaved such that the same problems appeared in an order that was shuffled and unpredictable. On a later test requiring students to calculate the volumes for similar types of figures, students scored higher if they had learned the information through interleaving, as compared with blocking.Other studies have reported benefits of interleaving on the learning of geometric concepts (e.g., Taylor & Rohrer, 2010) and algebraic rules (e.g., Mayfield & Chase, 2002). A small but growing number of studies has also reported benefits of interleaving for other types of cognitive and motor tasks as well (for reviews, see Dunlosky, Rawson, Marsh, Nathan, & Willingham, 2013;Rohrer, 2012).…”