engleski

The impact of the length and solvability of anagrams on performance and metacognitive judgments

Anagrams are commonly used in the field of problem solving since they provide a number of possible experimental manipulations such as length, difficulty, and solvability. Recent trends in cognitive psychology emphasize the importance of metacognitive processes which accompany human reasoning, decision making and problem solving. In this study, our goal was to measure performance and metacognitive judgments while manipulating the length and solvability of anagrams. Participants were in general faster for shorter and for solvable anagrams. Additionally, the difference between shorter and longer anagrams was significantly larger for solvable compared to unsolvable anagrams. The only significant effect on accuracy was the length with a higher accuracy for shorter anagrams. For judgments of solvability length was again the only significant factor with shorter anagrams initially judged as more solvable. Finally, the analysis of post-trial judgments of difficulty showed both effects were significant. Solvable and shorter anagrams were judged as easier in general. However, the difference in judgments of the difficulty between shorter and longer anagrams was significant only for solvable anagrams. In total, participants seem to rely on extremely salient cues (length) when making initial metacognitive judgments while post-trial judgments are impacted by more factors. Further experiments should provide a more in-depth study of the differences depending on solvability and accuracy (e.g. differences in metacognitive judgments between correctly solved solvable anagrams and correctly recognized unsolvable anagrams).

problem solving, anagrams, metacognition, unsolvable problems

nije evidentirano