Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

We have identified mechanisms that generate questions when individuals solve problems, comprehend text, and engage in conversations. Some of these mechanisms have been discussed in previous research in cognitive science and discourse processing, whereas other mechanisms were discovered when we analyzed videotapes of student-tutor interactions. The present study tested whether anomalous information causes an increase in questions when individuals solve mathematics problems and comprehend stories. College students were instructed to generate questions while they were solving problems (i.e., algebra and statistics) or while they were comprehending stories (e.g., fables and parables). There were several different versions of each problem or story: (1) complete original, (2) deletion of critical information, (3) addition of contradictory information, and (4) addition of irrelevant information. The deletion versions elicited the most questions whereas the original versions elicited the fewest questions; the addition versions were in-between. The validity of some of the question generation mechanisms is supported by the fact that these transformations of content caused an increase in questions.