Practice schedules and the use of component skills in problem solving.

Abstract

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. Problem solving may be characterized as a process of assembling an appropriate sequence of component procedures (or operators) to accomplish a goal. Although this process may be guided by general or domain-specif ic problem solving strategies, the specific sequence of procedures used in a particular problem will typically be determined during the problem-solving episode. Fluent problem solving, therefore, requires efficient access and use of component skills. The issue addressed in this article is how the context in which component skills are acquired influences the ability to access and apply those skills in a problem solving context.