The Influence Of Task Type And Interval Length On The Interleaving Effect Of Category Learning In Junior Middle School Students

Classification learning is an important skill for individual life and work.However,there is no unified conclusion on the influence of sample presentation order on learning effect in category learning,and there are many explanation theories(such as differential contrast theory,retrieval practice theory and attentional decay theory).In this study,task type and interval length were used as variables to further explore the interleaving effect of category learning.The research is divided into two experiments.In the first experiment,71 junior high school students(37 males and 34 females,with an average age of 12.81±0.83)from a middle school in Nanning were selected to participate in the learning classification experiment,using 2(task type:rule-based,information integration)×2(presentation:massed presentation,interleaved presentation).The experiment is adapted from the classic experiment’painter’s painting’of the interleaving effect of category learning to explore whether the learning effect of interleaved presentation in category learning is better than that of massed presentation as long as the difference between the samples is enhanced.That is,test the difference contrast hypothesis of the interleaving effect.The results show that:(1)No matter in which task type of category learning,the interaction between task type and presentation mode is not significant,[F(1,52)=0.91,p>0.05,η~2=0.02].The interleaved presentation mode is more conducive to the classification performance of the subjects,that is,whether the subjects face the rule-based task or the information integration task in category learning,the interleaved presentation is more effective.(2)There was no gender difference in the interleaving effect.Repeated measures analysis of variance was performed on the gender and classification scores of all participants.The results showed that the main effect of the presentation mode was significant,but the interaction between the presentation mode and gender was not significant,[F(1,51)=0.53,p>0.05,η~2=0.01],that is,both boys and girls,the advantage of interlaced presentation is stable in their category learning.(3)The metacognitive judgment of the subjects was not related to their true classification scores.The chi-square test was performed on the metacognitive judgment and true classification scores of eligible subjects.The results showed that in the rule-based task type,there was no significant difference between the metacognitive judgment of the subjects and the actual scores they obtained,χ~2(1)=0.360,p=0.850;in the information integration task,there was no significant difference between the metacognitive judgment of the subjects and the actual performance they obtained,χ~2(1)=1.574,p=0.210.In Experiment 2,69 junior high school students(36 males and 33 females,with an average age of:13.10±0.69 years old)from a middle school in Nanning were selected to participate in the learning classification experiment.The mixed experimental design of 2(interval time:short time,long time)×2(task type:rule-based,information integration-based)was adopted,in which the interval time was the between-subject variable and the task type was the within-subject variable.By comparing the two presentation methods in Experiment 1,it was found that in the interleaved presentation,the time interval between different examples of the same category became longer due to the interspersed examples of other categories between different examples of the same category.Therefore,Experiment 2 will explore whether the occurrence of the cross-effect benefits from the increase of the interval time of the same category samples,and test the retrieval practice theory of the cross-effect.The results show that:(1)There was no significant difference between the interval length and the classification performance of category learning.By analyzing the experimental data,it can be seen that the interaction between task type and interval length is not significant,[F(1,55)=0.50,p>0.05,η~2=0.00],There is no significant difference in the classification performance between the short-term interval group and the long-term interval group.It can be seen that the variable of interval length has no effect on the classification performance of the dependent variable.(2)No matter what kind of task type and interval length,gender has no effect on the classification performance of the subjects,and the interaction between task type,interval length and gender is not significant,[F(1,53)=0.07,p>0.05,η~2=0.00].The results show that the interleaving effect is stable in category learning based on rule and information integration tasks,which supports the discriminative-contrast theory of interleaving effect.The interval length has no effect on category learning based on rule and information integration tasks.