Interactive Graphical Representations Support the Formulation of Sound Hypotheses in a Rule Discovery Task

In the 2-4-6 rule discovery task, reasoners seek to discover a rule that governs the arrangement of three numbers (or triple). The to-be-discovered rule is ‘any increasing sequence’. Upon being given the triple 2-4-6 as an initial example, however, reasoners are lured to formulate overly specific hypotheses. Traditionally, this task is conducted primarily from an internal representation of the triples and candidate hypotheses. More recently, substantial representational effects have been demonstrated wherein an external representation of the dimensions of the problem space facilitated successful rule discovery. In the current study, an interactive external representation was created by concurrently plotting each triple produced by the participants. Compared to a control group, participants who performed the task with this interactive external representation formulated sounder hypotheses which led to the production of more informative triples and to more successful rule discovery.