EFFECTS OF HYPOTHESIS GENERATION ON HYPOTHESIS-TESTING IN RULE-DISCOVERY TASKS

The extent to which hypothesis generation affects hypothesis-testing p erformance was examined in a rule-discovery task. One hundred eight un dergraduates enrolled in introductory psychology were randomly assigne d to conditions in which the participants, experimenter, other partici pants, or no one generated hypotheses before the participants were tes ted on three different tasks. Hypothesis-testing performance in the ex perimenter-supplied condition was significantly higher than in the oth er conditions, suggesting that generating a list of hypotheses does no t in itself improve hypothesis-testing performance. Among participants who generated hypotheses, those who generated the correct hypothesis before beginning the testing were more likely to solve the problem, su ggesting that poor hypothesis-generation abilities might be a barrier to hypothesis-testing performance.