Help seeking is guided by a wider variety of considerations beyond improving immediate answer accuracy than withholding answers is¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r2 · q2
Currency · newest study 2021 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? The authors interpret the weaker confidence-help seeking association and the absent accuracy benefit as evidence that help seeking serves goals such as informativeness, curiosity, and feedback, and is inhibited by self-esteem and time costs. → 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

q2 · i? · causal · r2

Authors' interpretation in the abstract, elaborated in the introduction: people might seek instrumental help "to improve the informativeness of answers, satisfy curiosity... or receive feedback about the accuracy of their knowledge", and may hesitate due to self-esteem threat or reluctance to spend more time. This is an interpretation, not a directly tested mechanism.

"Our findings suggest that seeking help is guided by a wider variety of considerations than withholding answers, with some considerations going beyond improving the immediate accuracy of one's answers."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Participants seek help less often than they withhold answers when both strategies are available or compared across conditions
• Within a single LLM session, students' help-seeking shifts toward answer- and verification-seeking while explicit self-regulation modestly increases
• 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 — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
• The overlap in confidence ranges between submitted answers and strategy use is larger for help seeking than for withholding answers — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
• Participants seek AI advice less frequently when accuracy carries monetary stakes — related
• Information seeking follows a cost–benefit analysis of resolving curiosity — related
• Allowing opt-out options improves output-bound accuracy in adults, primary-school children, and preschoolers — related