Wisen's notes

# Interleaved learning

A method of study where we deliberately learn about different topics within a particular domain given that there is an evidence that it'll improve our performance (although it seems like this learning is effective because we need to fill our time due to Spacing effect). This is in contrast with blocked practice where we'll master a specific topic before we move on to a different domain.

In the context of software engineering, for example, we could interleave a programming language, testing, design patterns, etc, rather than mastering the specific nuance of a programming language.

The improvement of performance is attributed to the practice of discrimination between topics, problems, etc.

This idea seems to be related to Context switching helps when you get stuck.

# Reference

Goldstein, Cognitive Psychology (p. 18)

Can we start revising another topic or would this interfere and deteriorate our performance? To answer this latter question, research suggests that intermixing different topics within a particular domain (this is called interleaving) will not deteriorate but actually improve performance! (Reedier & Pic, 2012; Rohrer, 2012).