Compared to blocked practice, interleaved practice of different tasks leads to superior long-term retention despite poorer initial acquisition performance. This phenomenon, the contextual interference effect, is well documented in various domains but it is not yet clear if it persists in the absence of explicit knowledge in terms of fine motor sequence learning. Additionally, while there is some evidence that interleaved practice leads to improved transfer of learning to similar actions, transfer of implicit motor sequence learning has not been explored. The present studies used a serial reaction time task where participants practiced three different eight-item sequences that were either interleaved or blocked on Day 1 (training) and Day 2 (testing). In Experiment 1, the retention of the three training sequences was tested on Day 2 and in Experiment 2, three novel sequences were performed on Day 2 to measure transfer. We assessed whether subjects were aware of the sequences to determine whether the benefit of interleaved practice extends to implicitly learned sequences. Even for participants who reported no awareness of the sequences, interleaving led to a benefit for both retention and transfer compared to participants who practiced blocked sequences. Those who trained with blocked sequences were left unprepared for interleaved sequences at test, while those who trained with interleaved sequences were unaffected by testing condition, revealing that learning resulting from blocked practice may be less flexible and more vulnerable to testing conditions. These results indicate that the benefit of interleaved practice extends to implicit motor sequence learning and transfer.

与块状练习相比，不同任务的交错练习会导致更好的长期保留，尽管初始获取性能较差。这种现象，即上下文干扰效应，在各个领域都有很好的记录，但尚不清楚它是否在缺乏精细运动序列学习方面的明确知识的情况下持续存在。此外，虽然有一些证据表明交错练习可以改善学习向相似动作的转移，但尚未探索隐式运动序列学习的转移。目前的研究使用了一系列反应时间任务，参与者在第 1 天（训练）和第 2 天（测试）练习了三个不同的八项序列，这些序列要么交错，要么被阻止。在实验 1 中，在第 2 天测试了三个训练序列的保留，在实验 2 中，在第 2 天执行了三个新序列以测量迁移。我们评估了受试者是否知道这些序列，以确定交错练习的好处是否延伸到隐式学习的序列。即使对于那些报告不知道序列的参与者，与练习阻塞序列的参与者相比，交错也对保留和转移都有好处。那些用阻塞序列训练的人在测试时没有为交错序列做好准备，而那些用交错序列训练的人不受测试条件的影响，这表明由阻塞练习产生的学习可能不太灵活，更容易受到测试条件的影响。