Learners overwhelmingly judge blocking more effective than interleaving even when their test performance favors interleaving¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r2 · q3
Currency · newest study 2013 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q3 i? In both contiguous and spaced conditions, roughly two thirds of participants rated blocking as more effective, significantly above chance. → Monica S. Birnbaum 2013

Evidence¶

Monica S. Birnbaum 2013¶

Monica S. Birnbaum, Nate Kornell, Elizabeth Ligon Bjork, & Robert A. Bjork. (2013). Why interleaving enhances inductive learning: The roles of discrimination and retrieval. Memory & Cognition, 41, 392–402. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-012-0272-7

q3 · i? · causal · r2

Post-test judgment among the 114 Experiment 2 participants: 65% (37/57) favored blocking in the contiguous condition (z = 2.12, p < .05) and 67% (38/57) in the spaced condition (z = 2.38, p < .05), despite blocking being counterproductive or ineffective. No effect size is printed for this judgment difference.

"In the contiguous condition, 65 % (37/57) of the participants favored blocking. A binomial test using an approximation of the normal distribution showed this ratio to be significantly different from chance (i.e., from 50 %), z 0 2.12, p< .05"

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Self Assessment Accuracy Is Low Without Training — the general claim this finding bears on, with the studies behind it
• Interleaving Improves Discrimination — possibly the same claim (merge candidate)
• Learners Misjudge Spacing Benefits — a broader claim this one bears on
• When trivia questions space out exemplars, spacing and interleaving are subadditive: interleaving beats blocking only with contiguous presentation, and spacing helps blocked but not interleaved study — related
• Inserting trivia questions between interleaved exemplars impairs inductive learning when it disrupts juxtaposition of categories, with total spacing held constant — related
• Interleaving category examples improves inductive category learning for visual and mathematical materials, but not for expository texts or word categories — related
• When exemplars are already interleaved, larger temporal spacing between same-category exemplars yields better inductive learning than smaller spacing — related
• Learners misjudge which learning strategies are effective — related
• Interleaving during concept learning benefits memory of studied items, with effect sizes (Hedges' g) of up to 0.65 — related
• Even when motivated to distinguish and informed that differences matter, learners in Experiment 1 blocked 68% of their study sequence choices — related
• In Experiment 1, students' prospective judgments of learning were higher for blocked studying even though actual test performance was higher for interleaved studying — a narrower finding that bears on this claim