Combining Blocked and Interleaved Presentation During Passive Study and Its Effect on Inductive Learning

Past research has shown that interleaved presentation produces better recall when compared to blocked presentation. However, the structure of the study session can alter the effectiveness of interleaved over blocked study. Kost, Carvalho, and Goldstone (2015) found that repeating study items resulted in a benefit of blocked over interleaved presentation when items were studied actively. However, the effect of repetition during passive study, as well as the combination of both blocked and interleaved presentation during repeated study, remains unknown.The present experiment replicated the method of Kost and colleagues’ (2015) to evaluate a combined method which involves the presentation of study items in blocks followed by the repeated presentation of the same study items in interleaved order. The experiment also aimed to extend the findings of Kost and colleagues by evaluating the effectiveness of interleaved versus blocked presentation when participants study items passively. Combined presentation and interleaved-only presentation resulted in higher test performance than blocked-only presentation, but there was no significant difference between interleaved presentation and combined presentation.