Learning to Avoid Biased Reasoning: Effects of Interleaved Practice and Worked Examples

• In Event: Teaching Critical Thinking: Assessing and Improving Students’ and Teachers’ Reasoning Skills

Abstract

Fostering critical thinking (CT) skills is an important educational objective. CT-skills are pivotal for learning, but also for daily-life decision-making and complex professional skills. One important aspect of CT is avoiding biased reasoning. Recent research showed that explicit instructions combined with practice were effective for learning to avoid biased reasoning, but did not foster transfer to non-practiced tasks (Heijltjes et al., 2015). We therefore investigated whether transfer improves from interleaved practice with worked examples.
According to the contextual interference effect, transfer is enhanced when materials are presented and learned under conditions of high interference (Schneider et al., 2002). Contextual interference can be created by interleaved as opposed to blocked practice. Whereas blocked practice involves practicing one task-category at a time before the next, interleaved practice mixes practice of several categories. Interleaved practice allows students to infer the distinctive characteristics of different problem-types and to select a learned procedure for solving new problems (Kornell & Bjork, 2008). However, interleaved practice is usually more cognitively demanding than blocked practice. Hence, when tasks impose lower cognitive load –such as worked examples that present the worked-out solution procedure– more cognitive capacity is available for comparing problem categories (Paas & Van Merriënboer, 1994). Consequently, students might benefit more from high contextual interference when practicing with worked examples than with practice problems.
In two experiments, we investigated the effects of practice schedule (blocked vs. interleaved) and practice-task format (worked examples vs. problems) on learning and transfer of unbiased reasoning. 142 (experiment 1) and 109 (experiment 2) higher education students first learned how to solve base-rate (Br), conjunction (C), and syllogistic reasoning (S) tasks by video instruction followed by practicing 9 tasks. Depending on assigned condition, they practiced in a: 1) blocked schedule (e.g. Br-Br-Br-C-C-C-S-S-S) with worked examples; 2) interleaved schedule (e.g. Br-C-S-C-S-Br-S-Br-C) with worked examples; 3) blocked schedule with problems; or 4) interleaved schedule with problems. Thereafter, participants completed an immediate and delayed (two weeks later) posttest on five task-categories, to measure effects on learning (i.e. performance on practiced task-categories) and transfer (i.e. performance on non-practiced tasks-categories: contingency and Wason selection).
Participants learned, i.e., they improved from pretest to immediate and delayed posttest on practiced tasks, but there was no effect of practice schedule. There was an effect of practice-task format, but it was inconsistent across experiments: worked examples were more beneficial in experiment 1, and practice problems in experiment 2. The predicted three-way interaction between test-moment, practice schedule and practice-task type did not emerge. Regarding transfer to non-practiced tasks, experiment 1 showed improvement from immediate to delayed posttest when practicing with problems in an interleaved schedule. However, experiment 2 failed to replicate this interaction effect, showing no effects on transfer.
Thus, creating high interference during practice did not enhance learning and transfer of unbiased reasoning in our study, possibly because the task-categories were highly distinctive. Effects of worked examples were inconsistent across student populations. Future research should continue to search for conditions under which transfer would be enhanced.

Authors

• Lara van Peppen, Erasmus University Rotterdam

• Stefan Kolenbrander

• Peter Verkoeijen, Erasmus University

• Anita Heijltjes, Avans University of Applied Sciences

• Eva Janssen, Utrecht University

• Tamara van Gog, Utrecht University