Effects of interleaved and blocked study in a 24 hour delayed transfer test

Previous research has suggested that studying categories in either interleaved or blocked fashion can be beneficial for inductive learning. These conflicting results can be explained by considering that different category structures benefit differentially from blocked or interleaved study (Carvalho & Goldstone, 2013). However, memory-based theories have related the advantage of interleaved study with retrieval dynamics between study and test. One prediction of these theories is that previous results showing differential benefit of one schedule over the other might be related with the immediate test used. Here, participants were tested immediately and 24h after studying categories either interleaved or blocked. The findings are consistent with previous evidence using shorter retention intervals. The increased temporal delay between study and test does not seem to affect transfer performance for different types of category structures. These results are in agreement with the theory put forward by Carvalho and Goldstone (2013).