Hint-seeking Behavior and Task Performance

Hint-seeking Behavior and Task Performance

The purpose of this research was to investigate whether performance in solving insight problems would depend on active and passive control of hint-seeking. Seventy-two college students were recruited in the experiment involving a wordguessing game format. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions, with participants in the active condition having control over the hints given and those in the passive condition having no control over these. Results were that the active group performed significantly more accurately on solving the puzzles than did the passive group across trials, suggesting that actively seeking information enhances performance on insight problems.