The present study addressed the question whether differences in instruction, cueing, and learning processes systematically influence ToL performance across five difficulty levels (three to seven moves).
Although it is possible that this difference could be attributed to differences in instruction or the student population, there are several reasons we believe that this is not the case.
The students were not aware that there was a difference in instructions.
The students were generally surprised by the revelation of the difference in instructions and the improved performance of students using the visualization strategy for the processing of complex information.
Additionally, this analysis was split by TA to determine the effect of subtle difference in instruction on teaching-style, order, and teaching-style + order (Table 3).
The differences in direction- and/or instruction-specific signals during delay 1 and/or delay 2 represented in the caudal FEF and SEF discussed above are consistent with the differences in the effects of chemical inactivation of the 2 regions on memory-based smooth pursuit eye movements.
Other factors may also have influenced the results, for example, slight differences in verbal instructions to the participants, which are hard to replicate exactly.
In a review of clinical studies, Graham et al. [ 14] confirmed the latter point, and argued that "subtle differences in … instructions" (p. 870) may affect the results.
This was done to reduce variations due to differences in teachers' instructions.
They found increased uptake of the two-sample FIT (39.6%) as compared with the three-sample FIT (23.4%), but it was unclear how the differences in test instructions and sampling techniques among brands may have affected completion.
Perhaps it was the reduced number range (0-20) and minor differences in task instructions that limited the potential for power models to represent the data, as Barth and Paladino [ 26] focused on a 0-100 number line and indicated 50 as being 'halfway' at the beginning of the experiment.
