Random practice versus blocked practice

The podcast episode explores the debate between random practice and blocked practice in motor learning. Random practice involves switching between different skills randomly, while blocked practice focuses on practicing a single skill in blocks. The traditional belief is that random practice leads to better skill acquisition in the long run, while blocked practice allows for easier learning in the short term. However, the episode reviews a paper by Wolfgang Schollhorn and colleagues that challenges this belief. The study finds weak evidence in support of the contextual interference hypothesis, which suggests that random practice is better. In fact, the results show that there is no significant difference between random practice and blocked practice in terms of acquisition, retention, and transfer of skills.