Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Despite myriad research about the interleaving effect, learners tend to favor blocked schedule (grouping exemplars bycategory) over interleaved schedule (intermingling exemplars). We explored critical factors to engage more people inadopting interleaved schedule by using a painting style learning task. Participants studied the first section in an interleavedschedule and had either a test or restudy on that section. They were then asked to select their own study schedule for thesubsequent section. The results revealed the interleaving effect regardless of the interim-activity. More importantly, eventhough the interim-activity did not make participants selection in the two conditions different, participants performance inthe interim-test significantly predicted their selections, which implied that the better learning in the first section, the morelikely they chose interleaved schedule for the subsequent section. These findings suggest that ameliorating leaners initiallearning experience with interleaved schedule may debias their preferences toward blocked schedule.