Interleaved practice yields better category learning than blocked practice, and students who choose interleaved practice outperform those who choose blocked practice on novel materials¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study (2 entries) · causal r3 · q3 · i2 medium
Currency · newest study 2022 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q3 i2 Interleaved practice produced better classification performance than blocked practice in Test I (d = 0.76). → Onan 2022 q3 i2 Participants who chose interleaved practice for novel materials outperformed those who chose blocked practice in Test II (d = 0.61). → Onan 2022 (2)

Evidence¶

Onan 2022¶

Onan, E., Wiradhany, W., Biwer, F., Janssen, E. M., & de Bruin, A. B. H. (2022). Growing Out of the Experience: How Subjective Experiences of Effort and Learning Influence the Use of Interleaved Practice. Educational Psychology Review. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-022-09692-3

q3 · i2 · causal · r3

Within-subjects experiment in which all 150 participants studied 12 artists' painting styles through both blocked and interleaved units before Test I. The paired t-test showed interleaved practice "resulted in better classification performance than blocked practice" with d = 0.76.

"A paired sample t-test revealed that interleaved practice (M = 5.95, SD = 3.55) resulted in better classification performance than blocked practice (M = 3.11, SD = 2.54) in Test I, t(149) = 9.35, p < 0.001, d = 0.76."

Onan 2022 (2)¶

Onan, E., Wiradhany, W., Biwer, F., Janssen, E. M., & de Bruin, A. B. H. (2022). Growing Out of the Experience: How Subjective Experiences of Effort and Learning Influence the Use of Interleaved Practice. Educational Psychology Review. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-022-09692-3

q3 · i2 · causal · r3

Test II followed study phase II, in which participants studied six new artists with the strategy they chose. The independent-samples t-test showed choosers of interleaved practice "outperformed those who chose blocked practice" with d = 0.61.

"an independent sample t-test further revealed that participants who chose interleaved practice to study novel materials (M = 12.85; SD = 4.36) outperformed those who chose blocked practice (M = 10.04, SD = 4.61) in Test-II, t(148) = -3.73, p < 0.001, d = 0.61."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Interleaving category examples improves inductive category learning for visual and mathematical materials, but not for expository texts or word categories — a broader claim this one bears on
• Interleaving Improves Discrimination — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
• When exemplars are already interleaved, larger temporal spacing between same-category exemplars yields better inductive learning than smaller spacing — related
• Interleaving benefits transfer to novel items from a learned category, with effect sizes of up to 0.66 — possibly the same claim (merge candidate)
• Retrieval practice and spaced retrieval improve achievement and retention by medium amounts, while interleaving helps category learning only for some materials and blocking beats it for words — related
• Interleaving benefits low-skilled students more than high-skilled students when learning math problem categories — related
• Interleaved practice outperformed blocked practice across eight STEM classrooms — related
• Interleaved practice produces higher mathematics test scores than blocked practice in a classroom experiment — related
• Strategy efficacy beliefs shift toward the strategy a student chooses: choosers of blocked practice raised blocked beliefs and lowered interleaved beliefs, and vice versa — related