A preliminary examination of the contextual interference effect on trained trick retention in domestic dogs
Random practice order gave dogs zero edge over blocked order in learning or keeping new tricks.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Twenty-four pet dogs learned four new tricks. Half practiced in random order. Half practiced in blocked order.
Trainers used clickers and treats. Each dog had one session a day for eight days.
What they found
One week later both groups remembered the tricks equally well. Random order did not boost scores.
Time to learn and number of errors were also the same. Contextual interference failed to help.
How this fits with other research
Ferguson et al. (2022) compared two teaching sequences in humans and found one beat the other. The dog study mirrors that design but lands on a null result, showing the value of replication across species.
Vasconcelos et al. (2007) also tried to repeat an old learning effect and got nothing. Both papers warn us that ‘lab lore’ can crumble when tested again.
Carr et al. (1985) saw no gain from operant toy-play training in children with profound delays. Like the dog study, it shows that changing practice order or adding reinforcement does not always improve learning.
Why it matters
If you hoped random drills would lock in skills faster, this paper says don’t bother—for now. Keep your current blocked sequence while we wait for larger dog or human data. The real lesson is to test your favorite teaching hack; it might not survive a fresh trial.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
This study sought to enhance current dog training practices by determining whether a finding from human motor skill learning research, the contextual interference (CI) effect, could be replicated in a trick-training paradigm with companion dogs. In humans, research shows that practicing skills in random order, as compared with blocked order, improves learning of those skills. To test this question in dogs, we randomly allocated 17 dogs to blocked training (low CI) or random training (high CI). The dogs performed three behaviors of varying difficulty. After training, we conducted a retention test in which half of the dogs in each group performed the tasks in blocked order and the other half in random order. We scored each trick, measured duration, and measured whether dogs required one or two tries to perform a behavior. We found no significant differences between dogs who practiced three tricks in random or in blocked order during training and during a retention test. This study is the first to apply the CI effect to dog trick training. Although no evidence of the CI effect was found, the current research provides a preliminary framework for future studies with potential implications for increasing retention of trained skills.
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 2023 · doi:10.1002/jeab.858