In two experiments, 216 college students learned to solve one kind of mathematics problem before completing one of various practise schedules. In Experiment 1, students either massed 10 problems in a single session or distributed these 10 problems across two sessions separated by 1 week. The benefit of distributed practise was nil among students who were tested 1 week later but extremely large ...

Rodent fear conditioning models both excitatory learning and the pathogenesis of human anxiety, whereas extinction of conditional fear is a paradigm of inhibitory learning and the explicit model for behavior therapy. Many studies support a general learning rule for acquisition: Temporally spaced training is more effective than massed training. The authors asked whether this rule applies to exti...

Previously viewing a face typically leads to a decrease in the amount of time taken to later identify it (‘repetition priming’). Five repetition priming experiments are reported, which investigate whether multiple presentations of a face increase the amount of repetition priming. The results demonstrate similar amounts of priming from massed multiple presentations of the same face or a series o...

This article investigates the relation between mind wandering and the spacing effect in inductive learning. Participants studied works of art by different artists grouped in blocks, where works by a particular artist were either presented all together successively (the massed condition), or interleaved with the works of other artists (the spaced condition). The works of 24 artists were shown, w...

How to distribute the duration of practice and rest at each session is a matter of concern in organizing the practice of motor skills. In this connection, most studies have introduced the nature of motor task as a determining factor and suggested that if the discrete skills are practiced according to massed method and continued skills according to distributed method, then better results can be ...

Studies of extinction in classical conditioning situations can reveal techniques that maximize the effectiveness of exposure-based behavior therapies. In three experiments, we investigated the effect of varying the intertrial interval during an extinction treatment in a fear-conditioning preparation with rats as subjects. In Experiment 1, we found less fear at test (i.e., more effective extinct...

A robust finding in humans and animals is that intermixed exposure to 2 similar stimuli (AX/BX) results in better discriminability of those stimuli on test than does exposure to 2 equally similar stimuli in 2 separate blocks (CX_DX)--the intermixed-blocked effect. This intermixed-blocked effect may be an example of the superiority of spaced over massed practice; in the intermixed, but not the b...

A new olfactory conditioning procedure is described using short training trials with discrete presentation of conditioned stimuli (CS) and unconditioned stimuli (US). A short odor presentation along with a single-shock stimulus produced modest but reliable and reproducible learning. Multiple trials presented sequentially improved performance with increasing trial number. Trial spacing had a sig...

Abstract To examine the effects of task repetition with different schedules, English-as-a-foreign-language classroom learners performed same oral narrative six times under three schedules. They narrated six-frame cartoon story (a) consecutively in one class (massed practice), (b) at beginning and end a (short-spaced (c) as part two classes 1 week apart (long-spaced practice). The results yielde...