This process is possible only if certain chemical, thermodynamical, and mechanistic conditions are satisfied.
To satisfy these mechanistic conditions, (S)- 316 must react in the pro- E-conformation, whereas (R)- 316 must react in the pro- Z-conformation.
Originally, 24 participants were randomly assigned to the High-Mechanistic condition and 26 participants were randomly assigned to the Low-Mechanistic condition.
Participants in the original High-Mechanistic condition completed the additional Mechanistic Manipulation, while participants in the original Low-Mechanistic condition moved on immediately to the next task.
However, we observe considerable migration across conditions: while most participants in the original High-Mechanistic condition are able to accurately describe the robot's mechanism (71%), many participants from the original Low-Mechanistic condition are also able to do so (54%).
A large number of participants in the original Low-Mechanistic condition were still able to understand the robot's mechanism after completing the task.
Because of the manipulation's short duration, the original Low-Mechanistic condition did not experience a parallel manipulation to avoid introducing potential confounds with a control task.
Thus, while we expect the Mechanistic Manipulation to be the primary method increasing mechanistic understanding, we are able to account for participants who migrated across conditions (7 originally in the High-Mechanistic condition, 14 originally in the Low-Mechanistic condition) by including the Mechanistic Assessment responses in group assignment.
We investigate the role of mechanistic knowledge by comparing the strategies of participants who completed a short task emphasizing the robot's motor-wheel relationship (High-Mechanistic condition) against the strategies of participants who were not given this task (Low-Mechanistic condition).
Future studies may still wish to control for exposure time by including another control condition in which participants are exposed to the robot for the same amount of time as the High-Mechanistic condition without mechanistic instruction.
Participants in the original High-Mechanistic condition were shown (but did not physically interact with) two defective physical LEGO NXT robots and asked to predict whether the robot would be able to move forward in a straight line.
