Task difficulty increases hesitations, with significantly more hesitations on Medium and Hard tasks than Easy tasks¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r1 · q3
Currency · newest study 2026 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q3 i? Participants exhibited significantly more hesitations on Medium and Hard tasks relative to the Easy baseline, with no significant Medium–Hard difference. → Veronica Pimenova 2026

Evidence¶

Veronica Pimenova 2026¶

Veronica Pimenova, Chris Lee, Baramee Bhakdibhumi, Simon Chu, and Andrew Begel. (2026). Leveling the Playing Field: Temporal Video Segmentation for Individuals with ADHD in Computing Education. https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.24612 doi:10.48550/arxiv.2607.24612

q3 · i? · causal · r1

Negative Binomial GLMM of hesitation counts in the same within-subjects study. The article reports "substantially more hesitations" on Medium and Hard tasks versus Easy; the Medium–Hard difference was not significant (p=.178).

"Participants exhibited substantially more hesitations on both Medium tasks (𝛽= 2.24,𝑝<. 001) and Hard tasks ( 𝛽= 2.67,𝑝<. 001) relative to the Easy baseline."

Discussion¶

Learner Variables¶

• Attention — outcome: instruction changes it

Related Claims¶

• Task difficulty increases error counts, with significantly more errors on Medium and Hard tasks than Easy tasks — related
• Task difficulty (easy vs difficult simultaneous-equation problems) has significant main effects on intrinsic and extraneous cognitive load, but not on germane load — related
• Success rates decrease monotonically from easy to medium to hard difficulty levels across all models — related
• Easy tasks showed a floor effect across all participants and were excluded from hypothesis testing — related
• Segmented videos reduce hesitations for participants with ADHD by approximately 79% compared to non-segmented videos — related
• Goal setting improves performance — related