Imagine learning to recognize different types of animals, but instead of studying them one at a time, you mix them all together. Surprisingly, this method of interleaved learning actually improves your ability to identify the animals compared to studying them separately. But here’s the twist – learners are unaware of this benefit and actually prefer to study the animals one by one. While previous research has explored the effects of interleaving on visual learning, little attention has been given to its impact on other sensory modalities. That’s why this new study decided to investigate if interleaved learning could also enhance perception in the auditory, olfactory, gustatory, and tactile domains. Surprisingly, none of the individual experiments showed a significant effect of interleaving. However, when the data from all experiments were analyzed together, a small but significant effect emerged. This finding suggests that interleaved learning has broad applicability across all senses. Furthermore, learners in the interleaved condition tended to underestimate their own performance, showing that they were not fully aware of the benefits. These results challenge previous studies that consistently found a preference for studying items in a sequential manner. So, next time you want to boost your ability to perceive and learn about the world around you, consider giving interleaved learning a try! To learn more about this fascinating research and its implications for education and training, check out the full article.

Abstract
Research on sequence effects on learning visual categories has shown that interleaving (i.e., studying the categories in a mixed manner) facilitates category induction as compared to blocking (i.e., studying the categories one by one), but learners are unaware of the interleaving effect and prefer blocking. However, little attention has been paid to sequence effects in perceptual learning across further sensory modalities. The present (preregistered) research addresses this shortcoming by using auditory (birdcalls), olfactory (tealeaves), gustatory (ingredient mixtures), and tactile (stones) stimuli across four analog experiments. The number of participants per experiment was determined based on a medium effect size of interleaving. Participants studied six categories (with six exemplars, respectively) either interleaved or blocked. No single experiment showed a significant effect of interleaving. We ran a comprehensive meta-analysis based on the data from all experiments, which revealed a significant small effect of interleaving, demonstrating its applicability to perceptual learning across all sensory modalities. Learners in the interleaved condition underestimated their classification performance. Overall, learners did not rate interleaving as less effective than blocking, which is at odds with previous studies that consistently demonstrated a metacognitive preference of blocking. Our findings suggest that learners rely less on conventional beliefs about the effectivity of study sequence when dealing with unfamiliar (blindfolded) perceptual learning tasks.

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