Practice Schedules and the Use of Component Skills in Problem Solving

In motor and verbal learning, random practice schedules produce poorer acquisition performance but superior retention relative to blocked practice. We extend this contextual interference effect to the case of learning cognitive procedural skills to be used in problem solving. Subjects in three experiments practiced calculation with Boolean functions. After this acquisition phase, subjects solved problems requiring these procedures. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated superior transfer to problem solving for skills acquired under random schedules. In Experiment 3, subjects practiced component skills in a blocked schedule, with one of four tasks—same-different judgment, mental arithmetic, short-term memory, or long-term memory—intervening between trials. For same-different judgments and mental arithmetic, transfer performance was comparable to that found for random schedules in Experiments 1 and 2. This result suggests that the differences depend on processing rather than storage demands of intertrial activity. Implications for theories of problem solving and part-whole transfer are discussed.

[1]  Walter Schneider,et al.  Micro Experimental Laboratory: An integrated system for IBM PC compatibles , 1988 .

[2]  Mark C. Detweiler,et al.  The Role of Practice in Dual-Task Performance: Toward Workload Modeling a Connectionist/Control Architecture , 1988, Human factors.

[3]  John B. Shea,et al.  Context Effects in Memory and Learning Movement Information , 1983 .

[4]  R. A. Carlson.  Processing nonlinguistic negation , 1989 .

[5]  Robert W. Proctor,et al.  The influence of intervening tasks on the spacing effect for frequency judgments. , 1980 .

[6]  A. Anastasi.  Individual differences. , 2020, Annual review of psychology.

[7]  G. Sperling,et al.  Successive approximations to a model for short term memory. , 1967, Acta psychologica.

[8]  David A. Rosenbaum,et al.  Successive Approximations to a Model of Human Motor Programming , 1988 .

[9]  R. Magill,et al.  American Psychological Association, Inc. The Locus of Contextual Interference in Motor-Skill Acquisition i , 2022 .

[10]  R. A. Carlson,et al.  Acquisition context and the use of causal rules , 1989, Memory & cognition.

[11]  John R. Anderson,et al.  Discrimination of operator schemata in problem solving: Learning from examples , 1985, Cognitive Psychology.

[12]  John R. Anderson,et al.  Practice, working memory, and the ACT-super(* ) theory of skill acquisition: A comment on Carlson, Sullivan, and Schneider (1989). , 1989 .

[13]  J. Shea,et al.  Contextual interference effects on the acquisition, retention, and transfer of a motor skill. , 1979 .

[14]  L. Jacoby,et al.  When forgetting helps memory: an analysis of repetition effects , 1982 .

[15]  J. Shea,et al.  Knowledge incorporation in motor representation , 1988 .

[16]  Walter Schneider,et al.  Component Fluency in a Problem-Solving Context , 1989 .

[17]  G. Logan.  Skill and automaticity: Relations, implications, and future directions. , 1985 .

[18]  Gavan Lintern,et al.  Part-Task Training for Tracking and Manual Control , 1985 .

[19]  P. Carpenter,et al.  Individual differences in working memory and reading , 1980 .

[20]  Marc A. Sullivan,et al.  Practice and working memory effects in building procedural skill. , 1989 .

[21]  D. Mackay.  The Organization of Perception and Action , 1987 .

[22]  S. T. Klapp,et al.  Short-term memory does not involve the "working memory" of information processing: The demise of a common assumption , 1983 .

[23]  Douglas L. Hintzman,et al.  Theoretical implications of the spacing effect. , 1974 .

[24]  P. Carpenter,et al.  Individual Differences in Integrating Information between and within Sentences. , 1983 .