A puzzle which can tell players how fast they think on their feet has been developed by a University of Leeds researcher.
DecryptIQ is a web-based puzzle developed by Dr George Gabriel, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the University of Leeds' School of Psychology, who is researching the factors that make problem-solving easier or harder, and enjoyable – or not. He hopes that the findings will in future be used to create personalised learning for maths pupils.
The puzzles are different each time you play, so you can't rely on your memory. Instead, the score reflects how you approach new problems in the moment - offering a snapshot of how you think on your feet.
The average score is 100, with around two out of three players scoring between 85 and 115. Less than one in 10 people will score more than 130.
Our findings could be used to design new ways of learning for pupils, to create a more personalised, adaptive approach to learning.
Developing problem-solving strategies can help you increase your score, but what's being tested isn't how well you do – it's how difficult you find it.
Players rate how alert they feel, how distracting their environment is and how interested they are in the task – and all these ratings contribute to the final score.
What's more, the responses help identify players' problem-solving performance under different conditions.
Improving learning
The data is teaching researchers how to identify what makes problems like this easy, hard, enjoyable or frustrating for new learners. The findings can then be used to help new learners keep trying when they find real-world problems difficult – such as algebra or coding.
Dr Gabriel said: "Our goal is to produce the largest and most diverse dataset on human problem-solving behaviour recorded to date.
"The DecryptIQ score is higher for participants who tend to be better at abstract reasoning - the kind of thing involved in solving algebra problems or writing computer programs.
"Our findings could be used to design new ways of learning for pupils, to create a more personalised, adaptive approach to learning."
