Material difficulty is not determined solely by element number and interactivity¶
Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · reviewr2·q2
Currency · newest study 2010 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person
Subclaims¶
Reading the evidence codes
q is the design tier, i the impact, n the sample, and the kind with its r
the rigour judged within that kind: what each code means.
This claim: no standardized effect is recorded in observations/ for it yet, so no benchmark reading is possible.
q2 i? Difficulty also depends on factors beyond element interactivity, such as goal configuration in problems, ontological category shifts, and conflicting or ambiguous relations. → de Jong 2010
Evidence¶
de Jong 2010¶
de Jong, T. (2010). Cognitive load theory, educational research, and instructional design: some food for thought. Instructional Science. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11251-009-9110-0
q2 · i? · review · r2
The review attributes to Klahr and Robinson a finding that children had considerably more difficulty with all-pegs-occupied Tower of Hanoi problems "despite the number of moves being the same in both problems". Reported as a cited second-hand finding, no effect size printed.
"Klahr and Robinson (1981), for example, found that children had considerably more difficulty solving Tower of Hanoi problems in which they had to end up with all pegs occupied compared to the traditional Tower of Hanoi problem where all disks must end up on one peg."
Discussion¶
Related Claims¶
- Everyday language routinely and productively crosses ontological categories — related
- Cognitive Overload Degrades Learning — related
- Conflict-based instruction improves science conceptual learning, though staged contradictions helped only learners who reported being confused, and no study isolates disequilibrium as the mechanism — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
- Ambiguous tasks with a revision step help students recognize the role of assumptions in mathematical activity — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
- Novices can and do reason across ontological categories in everyday and scientific contexts — related
- Problem isomorphs with identical structure differ greatly in difficulty; Monster Change took 16 times as long to solve as the standard problem — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
- Expert physicists apply matter-based predicates to non-material concepts in professional discourse — related
- Neither blood circulation nor diffusion has an inherent correct ontology; predicates from both direct and emergent process categories apply to each — related
- Experts' ontological choices about the same physical phenomenon are context-dependent — related
Page metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
type |
claim |
id |
difficulty-beyond-element-interactivity |
title |
Material difficulty is not determined solely by element number and interactivity |
description |
Material difficulty is not determined solely by element number and interactivity |
status |
review |
evidence_strength |
weak |
newest_evidence |
2010 |
generated |
by process:wiki-ingest on 2026-10-18 |
trust |
unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content |
sources |
1 — de-jong-2010 |
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