“Counterintuitive as it may be to art history teachers—and our participants—we found that interleaving paintings by different artists was more effective than massing all of an artist’s paintings together.” Interleaving. That’s a cognitive science word, and it simply means mixing related but distinct material during study. Music teachers have long favored a variation on this technique, switching from scales, to theory, to pieces all in one sitting. So have coaches and athletic trainers, alternating endurance and strength exercises to ensure recovery periods for certain muscles. These
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