Interleaved Presentation Benefits Science Category Learning

Abstract

The present study investigated whether the sequencing of exemplars affects learning of rule-based science categories. We taught undergraduate students chemical categories by showing them diagrams of organic chemical compounds accompanied by their category label in either an interleaved or blocked fashion. On a categorization test of novel exemplars administered 2 days later, interleaved presentation produced superior performance than blocked presentation for categories that were visually simple (Experiment 1) and relatively more complex (Experiment 2). The advantage of interleaved presentation was still observed when the diagnostic features of each category were highlighted during study (Exp..