In a 1978 study, researchers found that children who practiced tossing a beanbag at varied distances were more likely to hit their targets than children who practiced tossing from a set distance.
This effect also rings true in other domains. World-class athletes specializing in one sport are more likely to have had early experience in multiple sports than national-class athletes. Meanwhile, Nobel laureates are more likely to have had early study and work experiences beyond their discipline than nationally acclaimed award winners.
Such observations motivated the researchers behind the current study to question whether varied training could aid cognitive learning too- and specifically, working memory.
“We chose working memory because it is a core ability needed to engage with reality and construct knowledge. It underpins language comprehension, reasoning, problem-solving, and many sorts of everyday cognition, " said lead author of the study, Elizabeth A. L. Stine-Morrow, a Beckman researcher and professor emerita of educational psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in a press release.
For the study, the researchers recruited 90 participants aged between 60 and 87 years old. To begin, the researchers assessed participants' reading span: their ability to remember information while reading something unrelated.
In this case, reading span was assessed by asking participants to read and comprehend a series of logical and illogical sentences and then recall the letters in the correct order. The more letters they recalled in the right order, the better their working memory.
After the initial test, each participant was trained in one of four practice regimens for two weeks: the reading span test used in the final assessment, a new working memory activity, multiple working memory activities, or a control task unrelated to working memory. Prior to the final assessment and for the following two weeks, all participants practiced a variation of the reading span task.
Ultimately, the researchers found that those who practiced with multiple working memory activities experienced the most improvement in working memory, and that they also outperformed those who had only rehearsed the reading span task throughout the training period. They noted, however, that the mixed practice group did not immediately outperform others.
“They needed to work for it,” said Stine-Morrow, “Mixed practice did not directly lead to better performance; it led to better learning. That group was the slowest to improve on the reading span task, but they ultimately reached the highest peak.”
Stine-Morrow noted that varied practice may have promoted skill development via ‘mutualism’, defined as ‘mutual growth among closely related abiilties’. She added that scaling up this principle and combining it with different kinds of skills may demonstrate broader effects.
Sources: Intelligence, Neuroscience News
