Interleaved learning with verbal materials

与以封闭的方式呈现每个类别的范例相比，交错不同类别的范例似乎是一种简单但有效的方法来改善学校的归纳学习。尽管交错的优势在某些类型的材料（如自然主义绘画和其他视觉材料）中得到了证明，但对于语言材料，如单个单词或临时文本，结果是混合的。此外，迄今为止进行的所有研究都只以成年学习者为基础，并且只对学习成果进行了即时或稍微延迟的评估。因此，在多大程度上，持久的知识的收购可以提高通过使用交错学习计划与口头材料在学校的孩子是未知的。本项目将通过关注三个典型的学习目标来缩小这一研究差距，这三个目标依赖于归纳和口头材料：（1）初级读者的形素-音素对应规则的获得，（2）拼写规则的获得，以及（3）基于样例的口头描述的概念知识的获得。归纳学习中的序列效应理论，如注意力的序列理论，强调了影响样本交错呈现效果的条件。当不同的类别难以区分时，交错应该比阻塞更有效，因此类别之间的比较对于掌握类别结构至关重要。相反，当属于同一类别的样本的共性更重要时，分块应该更有效。第一个目的将是澄清是否交错学习与不同复杂性的口头材料，集中在不同类型的知识（语音，正字法，语义知识），是更有效的比块学习时，类间相似性高，类内相似性低的条件得到满足。本研究的第二个目的是研究教学支持的作用。数学学习的实验研究表明，教学支持可能是一个重要的调节作用的交织在学校环境中。教授相关的比较策略，并促使学生在交叉学习中使用这些策略，可能会增加交叉学习的好处，并增加实际受益于交叉学习的学生数量。第三个目标是通过改变学习后立即到八周和一年的保留间隔来检查交错对持久学习的作用。最后，我们还将收集学习过程的措施，探索学习者做什么受益于交错，重点是学习过程的动态，表明范例之间的歧视和比较。

Interleaving exemplars of different categories compared to presenting exemplars of each category in a blocked fashion seems to be a simple but powerful way to improve inductive learning at school. Although a consistent advantage of interleaving has been demonstrated for certain types of materials (such as naturalistic paintings and other visual materials), the results for verbal materials, such as single words or expository texts, are mixed. Moreover, all studies conducted to date have been based only on adult learners and have used only immediate or slightly delayed assessments of learning outcomes. Therefore, the extent that the acquisition of lasting knowledge can be improved by using interleaved learning schemes with verbal materials in school children is unknown. The present project will contribute to closing this research gap by focusing on three typical learning objectives that rely on induction and verbal materials: (1) The acquisition of grapheme-phoneme correspondence rules in beginning readers, (2) the acquisition of spelling rules, and (3) the acquisition of conceptual knowledge based on verbal descriptions of exemplars. Theories of sequential effects in inductive learning, such as the sequential theory of attention, highlight conditions that influence the effects of an interleaved presentation of exemplars. Interleaving should be more effective than blocking when the different categories are difficult to discriminate, and comparisons between categories are therefore crucial for grasping the category structure. In contrast, blocking should be more effective when commonalities of exemplars belonging to the same category are more important. The first aim will be to clarify whether interleaved learning with verbal materials of different complexity, focused on different types of knowledge (phonological, orthographic, and semantic knowledge), is more effective than blocked learning when the conditions of high between-category similarity and low within-category similarity are fulfilled. The secondary aim of the proposed research will be to examine the role of instructional support. Experimental studies on mathematics learning suggest that instructional support might be an important moderator of the effect of interleaving in school settings. Teaching relevant comparison strategies and prompting students to use these strategies in interleaved learning might increase the benefits of interleaving and the number of students that actually profit from interleaving. The third aim is to examine the role of interleaving for lasting learning by varying the retention interval from immediately after learning to eight weeks and up to one year. Finally, we will also collect measures of learning processes to explore what learners do to benefit from interleaving, with a focus on dynamics of the learning process that indicate discrimination and comparison between exemplars.