Unexpected Solutions Task

Background

The Unexpected Solutions Task (UST) is a specialized psychological and cognitive testing paradigm designed to evaluate how people handle non-conform rule information under different mental workloads. Specifically, the task investigates the impact of cognitive load on math teachers' ability to handle unexpected problem solutions provided by students.

Zoltán Kondé and colleagues observed that (math) teachers must be highly flexible and adapt at quickly evaluating student provided solutions to problems that not immediately and obviously relate to their own solution schemas, particularly under the high cognitive workload conditions encountered by teachers in classrooms where they have to teach and manage a considerable number of students with different needs and skills. Often, such unexpected solutions get ignored simply because teachers miss the processing capacity to properly evaluate them on the fly.

In 2023, Kondé and colleagues published the UST to systematically study verification efficiency of both obvious and completely unexpected solutions to simple mathematical equations as a function of cognitive load. The verification task was embedded in the context of a simulated math contest in which participants had to evaluate the accuracy of student contestants' solutions to mathematical questions (such as 'x-4 = 5'). Cognitive load was manipulated intrinsically by varying the expectedness of the solutions (e.g. 'x = 9' vs. 'x = 45/5') as well as extrinsically by manipulating the type of information the teacher had to remember about the participating students. In the 'Team Competition' condition, extrinsic cognitive load was held low as no information about individual students needed to be remembered. However, in the 'Individual Student Competition' condition, extrinsic cognitive load was high as participants had to keep individual provided solutions in working memory for follow-up questions regarding one randomly chosen contestant.

Task Procedure

The Millisecond UST is based on the original Inquisit implementation generously shared by Zoltán Kondé. The task starts out with introducing the math contest, the student contestants, the five competing teams (A-D) and the response keys used to evaluate provided solutions.

Then all participants move on the 'Team Competition' stage in which the five teams, each with five team members, compete against one another. The team contest starts with Team A. Team A contestants go through 8 rounds of testing. Each of the rounds presents a different math problem that each of the five team members work on, one after the other. For example, round 1 presents the problem 'x-4 = 5'. The participants get a brief period to contemplate the actual solution (3000ms) before they are asked to evaluate the responses of the five Team A contestants as 'true or false' by pressing the S or K button on the keyboard, respectively. Solutions are randomly assigned to individual students and correctness of the solutions varies. There is no time limit for accuracy evaluations. Once Team A has finished, the team contest continues with Team B, C, and D in the same manner (though all teams are tested with different math problems).

After the team contest, participants (and teams) move on to the 'Individual Student Competition' stage. The team members of each team now compete against each other. The task stays the same as during the Team Competition: Each team goes through 8 rounds of testing. Each round presents a different question that has to be solved, individually, by all five competitors. Cognitive load for participants increases at this stage because at the end of each round, a random competitor is selected, and participants must recall whether the student's suggested solution was true or false.

At the end of the game, the final winner is announced.

What it Measures

The Unexpected Solutions Task (UST) is a measure of efficiency to handle unexpected solutions under cognitive duress

Psychological domains

• Cognitive Load: The total amount of mental effort that working memory uses at any given time
• Working Memory Capacity: The task tests the limits of the central executive system, which holds and processes information.
• Mathematical Flexibility: Ability to recognize non-standard or alternative mathematical pathways
• Schemas: Structured mental frameworks that help organize, interpret, and process vast amounts of incoming information.

Main Performance Metrics

• Efficiency Scores: Separate Inverse Efficiency Scores in processing solutions under low and high cognitive demand

Psychiatric Conditions

The Unexpected Solutions Task (UST) is intended for cognitive and education research with non-clinical populations.

References

Search Google Scholar for peer-reviewed, published research using the Inquisit Unexpected Solutions Task.

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Kondé, Z., Kovács, Z., & Kónya, E. (2023). Modeling teachers’ reactions to unexpectedness. Learning and Instruction, 86. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2023.101784