THE EFFECT OF INTERLEAVED PRESENTATION ON CATEGORY LEARNING

Abstract

Interleaving the presentation of exemplars from different categories (e.g., ABC – CAB – BCA), rather than blocking exemplars by category (e.g., AAA – BBB – CCC), often enhances inductive learning, as indicated by the learner’s ability to correctly classify new exemplars from those categories. The attentional bias framework proposed by Carvalho and Goldstone (2014) posits that interleaving enhances attention towards between-category differences (discriminative contrast hypothesis), while blocking enhances attention towards within-category similarities (commonality abstraction hypothesis). The current research tests a key tenet of the attentional bias framework, namely that categorization learning can be enhanced by directing attention towards discriminating features and away from irrelevant features (Experiment 1), and explores the effects of interleaving multiple category dimensions, which increases the attentional demands of the task (Experiment 2).