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Tran et al. (2015) evaluated whether engaging in practice testing versus restudy promotes transfer and concluded that testing does not enhance performance on a deductive reasoning task. The current research further evaluated Tran et al. (2015) and an alternative explanation for the observed effect-namely, that testing did not enhance memory for the information required to complete the deductive reasoning task. Learners studied premises from four scenarios and engaged in testing or restudy during practice. Following practice, learners completed a multiple-choice test that required them to deductively reason from premises. Results replicate Tran et al. (2015) by demonstrating that fill-in-the-blank testing does not promote transfer on a deductive reasoning task. Results also provide evidence suggesting that deductive reasoning depends on complete memory for requisite pieces of information and that testing effects on deductive reasoning are more likely to obtain under conditions that yield a memory advantage for testing versus restudy.

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Learning often happens in ideal conditions, but then must be applied in less-than-ideal conditions -such as when a learner studies clearly illustrated examples of rocks in a book but then must identify them in a muddy field. Here we examine whether the benefits of interleaving (vs. blocking) study schedules, as well as the use of feature descriptions, supports the transfer of category learning in new, impoverished contexts. Specifically, keeping the study conditions constant, we evaluated learners' ability to classify new exemplars in the same neutral context versus in impoverished contexts in which certain stimulus features are occluded. Over two experiments, we demonstrate that performance in new, impoverished contexts during test is greater for participants who received an interleaved (vs. blocked) study schedule, both for novel and for studied exemplars. Additionally, we show that this benefit extends to both a short (3-min) or long (48-h) test delay. The presence of feature descriptions during learning had no impact on transfer. Together, these results extend the growing literature investigating how changes in context during category learning or test impacts performance and provide support for the use of interleaving to promote the far transfer of category knowledge to impoverished contexts.