years since it was published in 1929. The study found that when
students were offered a second pass at a number of true-or-false
questions, this “deliberate reconsideration” helped students get
more answers correct. These students performed better than a
second set, who also got a second pass but didn’t write down their
answers during the first pass. This group performed worse than
the first set of students. So it seems that committing to an answer
and then having a chance to reflect on it creates greater accuracy.
More recent studies have found that follow-up questions that
promote higher-level thinking (like “And what else?”) help deepen
understanding and promote participation.
The second study Lindsay found involves psychologists picking
on three-year-olds by getting them to do something naughty—
peek at a toy—and then asking them if they’d peeked. About half of
the kids who had peeked lied and denied doing it, only for most of
them to immediately, accurately and revealingly answer the
question, “What’s the toy?” We’re not that different from young
kids. There’s usually something else there waiting to be unearthed
by the simple act of asking, and the AWE Question is one of the
most effective ways of doing that.