Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Adaptive learning systems that generate spacing intervalsbased on learner performance enhance learning efficiency andretention (Mettler, Massey & Kellman, 2016). Recentresearch in factual learning suggests that initial blocks ofpassive trials, where learners observe correct answers withoutovertly responding, produce greater learning than passive oractive trials alone (Mettler, Massey, Burke, Garrigan &Kellman, 2018). Here we tested whether this passive + activeadvantage generalizes beyond factual learning to perceptuallearning. Participants studied and classified images ofbutterfly genera using either: 1) Passive Only presentations,2) Passive Initial Blocks followed by active, adaptivescheduling, 3) Passive Initial Category Exemplar followed byactive, adaptive scheduling, or 4) Active Only learning. Wefound an advantage for combinations of active and passivepresentations over Passive Only or Active Only presentations.Passive trials presented in initial blocks showed the bestperformance, paralleling earlier findings in factual learning.Combining active and passive learning produces greaterlearning gains than either alone, and these effects occur fordiverse forms of learning, including perceptual learning.