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

• Published in: Memory & cognition Vol. 41; no. 3; pp. 392 - 402
• Main Authors: Birnbaum, Monica S., Kornell, Nate, Bjork, Elizabeth Ligon, Bjork, Robert A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer-Verlag 01.04.2013; Springer; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; Artists; Behavioral Science and Psychology; Biological and medical sciences; Birds; Butterflies & moths; Cognition. Intelligence; Cognitive Psychology; Concept Formation - physiology; Discrimination (Psychology) - physiology; Experiments; Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Human; Humans; Hypotheses; Learning; Learning - physiology; Learning. Memory; Male; Memory; Mental Recall - physiology; Middle Aged; Psychology; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Reasoning. Problem solving; Studies; Time Factors; Young Adult; Interleaving; Spacing; Induction; Categorization; Metacognition; Human; Memory retrieval; Interleaving · Spacing; Memory; Cognition; Experimental study; Learning; Acquisition process; Discrimination
• ISSN: 0090-502X; 1532-5946
• DOI: 10.3758/s13421-012-0272-7

Kornell and Bjork (Psychological Science 19:585–592, 2008 ) found that interleaving exemplars of different categories enhanced inductive learning of the concepts based on those exemplars. They hypothesized that the benefit of mixing exemplars from different categories is that doing so highlights differences between the categories. Kang and Pashler (Applied Cognitive Psychology 26:97–103, 2012 ) obtained results consistent with this discriminative-contrast hypothesis: Interleaving enhanced inductive learning, but temporal spacing, which does not highlight category differences, did not. We further tested the discriminative-contrast hypothesis by examining the effects of interleaving and spacing, as well as their combined effects. In three experiments, using photographs of butterflies and birds as the stimuli, temporal spacing was harmful when it interrupted the juxtaposition of interleaved categories, even when total spacing was held constant, supporting the discriminative-contrast hypothesis. Temporal spacing also had value, however, when it did not interrupt discrimination processing.