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Task Interspersal

Description of the Strategy

Task interspersal is an instructional strategy that involves intermingling easy and hard teaching trials as a tactic to maintain student motivation. This approach differs from the more common strategy of presenting multiple massed trials of a constant type of task (e.g., repeated multidigit multiplication problems). Instead, tasks that differ in difficulty from a target task are alternated with presentations of the target task. For example, rather than presenting only unknown sightreading words, previously learned words are interspersed with the unknown words.

Designing interspersed instruction involves collecting a pool of tasks to intersperse amid presentations of a target task. These tasks, either previously mastered (referred to as maintenance) or highly preferred, should be brief and associated with a history of high accuracy. Brevity and accuracy are linked to frequent and high rates of reinforcement, which is thought to account for the success of the approach. Reinforcement for completing the interspersed task is generally provided in the form of praise, particularly for younger students or students with cognitive challenges. For some students, completion of the interspersed task itself may be reinforcing, and additional reinforcement is then not necessary.

The optimal ratio of interspersed tasks to target tasks appears to be student specific. Most often, a known or preferred task is presented following 1 to 3 trials of the target task. Some students respond best to a much denser ratio, while infrequent interspersal is more effective with others. It is also important that the known or preferred task be presented in close proximity to the target task. This allows for a response that is reinforced just prior to presentation of a more difficult task.

Research Basis

Research has demonstrated positive effects of task interspersal across numerous behaviors important to learning. Several research studies have shown that interspersing trials of maintenance tasks among trials of unlearned or difficult tasks improves student learning rates and retention of new material. In addition, recent research provides preliminary evidence that the interspersal procedure may also improve on-task behavior. Studies have also shown that in some cases, task interspersal may result in improvements in student accuracy on the target task.

In addition to improvements in students' response to instruction, task interspersal has been shown to decrease problem behaviors, such as noncompliance, aggression, and self-injury, as well as increasing positive student affect. For example, researchers have compared student rates of compliance to instruction and problem behavior during an instructional sequence of constant task presentation containing a single repeated acquisition (i.e., unlearned) task; a varied task presentation, with the presentation of a variety of only acquisition tasks presented in random order; and task interspersal, with maintenance tasks interspersed with acquisition tasks. More specifically, the latter approach consisted of interspersing short, easier, and previously learned tasks after every 2 to 3 trials of the acquisition task. Results indicated that the task interspersal procedure was superior in improving task compliance as well as in reducing aggression and self-injurious behavior. Further, among the three types of instruction, ratings of positive student affect, such as happiness and enthusiasm, were highest when maintenance tasks were interspersed. This is consistent with research showing that, when given a choice, students prefer instruction containing interspersed maintenance items. It should also be noted that the positive outcomes described here have been obtained through the task interspersal procedure alone, without other types of intervention.

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