I Choose to Opt-Out of Answering: Individual Differences in Giving Up Behaviour on Cognitive Tests

Abstract

Under the Meta-reasoning model, the process of giving up when a solution may not be feasible reflects an adaptive metacognitive strategy, where individuals opt-out of responding to mitigate error and resource costs. However, research is still needed to determine whether individuals systematically vary in this behaviour and if so, which variables it meaningfully relates with. The current study (N = 176) is the first to examine factorial stability in giving up tendencies and its relationships with on-task confidence, cognitive ability, decision-making predispositions, and academic performance. To measure giving up tendencies, participants completed three cognitive tests which allowed for opting out, thereby capturing giving up frequency within each test and its consistency across tests. Participants also completed five other cognitive tasks embedded with confidence ratings, and a decision-making styles questionnaire. Confirmatory factor analyses were conducted on all giving up, confidence, and accuracy variables, with a three-factor solution having the best fit (containing a giving up factor, confidence factor, and cognitive ability factor). Supporting the proposed adaptive nature of giving up tendencies, the giving up factor correlated positively with cognitive ability, rational decision making, and academic performance. This research establishes factorial stability in giving up tendencies and provides a foundation for further investigation into its role within Meta-reasoning theory.

Metacognitive Effort Regulation across Cultures

“…Metareasoning research has looked at individual differences before but to only a limited extent. Previous research has focused largely on individual differences among participants from a single culture (e.g., Law et al 2022 ). In the present study, we used a nonverbal problem-solving task and employed state-of-the-art measures developed in recent years in the metareasoning domain to allow an initial peek into sources for differences in success and efficiency across populations.…”

“…Most research under this framework has been focused on delineating generalized principles common to problem solvers in general while differing between tasks (e.g., knowledge domain, Dentakos et al 2019 ) or items (e.g., easier vs. harder items, e.g., Bajšanski et al 2019 ; see Ackerman 2019 for a review). Some, though not much, of the metareasoning literature deals with individual differences (e.g., Kleitman et al 2019 ; Law et al 2022 ; Teovanović 2019 ). The literature addressing culture-dependent metacognitive differences is particularly scant.…”

Development of reasoning performance in Raven’s matrices is grounded in the development of effective strategy use.

“…In Raven's advanced matrices, difficult items are very hard for a typical sample of young adults (average performance for the hardest items is below chance level), and come with a high perceived cost to implement constructive matching (there are more elements to combine the reconstruct the correct answer), and a low perceived benefit (low likelihood of success). This presumably leads to disengagement from constructive matching (see also Law et al, 2022). By contrast, in Raven's standard matrices, difficult items are comparatively easier, and require the combination of less elements to reconstruct the correct answer.…”

Progressing the Development of a Collaborative Metareasoning Framework: Prospects and Challenges

“…It is also important to note that, during any reasoning task, there will be a continual interaction between monitoring and control processes to ensure that object-level cognition is maintained and progresses until an outcome is reached. If people feel confident about the efficacy of their object-level processing, then they will be likely to continue pursuing a particular course of action, whereas, if they reach a point where they have low confidence in what they are doing, then they might change their current strategy, ask for help or decide to give up on the task entirely (e.g., see Law et al 2022 for an in-depth discussion of people’s giving-up behaviour on reasoning tasks).…”