Participants seek help less often than they withhold answers when both strategies are available or compared across conditions¶
Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causalr2·q3·i2medium
Currency · newest study 2021 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person
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q3 i2 In Experiment 2a, participants used the available strategy less often in the help-seeking than in the don't-know condition, d = 1.66, and in the combination condition sought help less often than they responded don't know, d = 0.67. → Monika Undorf 2021
Evidence¶
Monika Undorf 2021¶
Monika Undorf, Iris Livneh, Rakefet Ackerman. (2021). Metacognitive control processes in question answering: help seeking and withholding answers. Metacognition and Learning. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11409-021-09259-7
q3 · i2 · causal · r2
Experiment 2a strategy-use frequencies (Table 1: 17.27% help requests vs 48.09% don't-know in single-option conditions). The t tests showed participants "less often sought help than they responded don't know, t(24) = 3.30, p = 0.003, d = 0.67" within the combination condition.
"Participants used the available strategy less often in the help-seeking than in the don't-know condition, t(46) = 5.75, p < 0.001, d = 1.66, and, in the combination condition, participants less often sought help than they responded don't know, t(24) = 3.30, p = 0.003, d = 0.67."
Discussion¶
Related Claims¶
- Help seeking is guided by a wider variety of considerations beyond improving immediate answer accuracy than withholding answers is
- The association between confidence and help seeking is weaker than the association between confidence and withholding answers — related
- The option to withhold answers improves output-bound accuracy, whereas the option to seek help does not consistently do so — related
- The overlap in confidence ranges between submitted answers and strategy use is larger for help seeking than for withholding answers — related
- Participants seek AI advice less frequently when accuracy carries monetary stakes — related
Page metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
type |
claim |
id |
help-seeking-less-frequent-than-withholding |
title |
Participants seek help less often than they withhold answers when both strategies are available or compared across conditions |
description |
Participants seek help less often than they withhold answers when both strategies are available or compared across conditions |
status |
review |
evidence_strength |
moderate |
newest_evidence |
2021 |
generated |
by process:wiki-ingest on 2026-10-19 |
trust |
unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content |
sources |
1 — monika-undorf-2021 |
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