Week 8 Session: Set your own surprise
Write a prepared explanation of something you already know, meet an unannounced follow-up question you have not seen yet, and record what the surprise did and did not settle.
12 April 2027
The ladder assumption under examination#
Week 7 changed the form of a response; now we change advance notice. An Explanation or Challenge performance on Week 5’s ladder may have been rehearsed. An unforeseen follow-up tests that possibility, but the answer can still be constructed during the question. The new fictional example keeps this examination problem in view.
Purpose and preparation#
This self-guided activity applies Week 8’s lesson. Allow 20 minutes. Work alone; a partner variant is offered in step 4, with its own limits stated. No specialist topic, paid tool or AI account is required. Elin and the transcript in the lecture are fictional; you are examining your own answers here, not marking anyone else’s.
The activity only works if you genuinely do not see the follow-up question before writing your prepared explanation. Read step 1, complete it fully, and only then move to step 2.
1. Write a prepared explanation — 5 minutes#
Choose something you can already explain fluently: a process, a mechanism, or how something works. Pick a topic you would not need to look up. Write two to four sentences explaining it, as if a friend who had never wondered about it had just asked you.
Preserve this wording exactly. You will compare it against what you write next.
2. Meet the follow-up — 2 minutes#
Here is the follow-up, which step 1 did not show you: name one condition your explanation depends on, then ask what would happen if that condition did not hold.
For example, if you explained why bread dough rises by naming yeast fermentation and gluten, a matching follow-up would be: “What would happen if you left the salt out of the dough entirely?” Apply the same move to your own topic — pick one thing your explanation assumed or relied on, and ask yourself what would change if it were different.
3. Answer the follow-up — 5 minutes#
Write your answer before reading the comparison below. Do not revise your step-1 explanation to make it fit; if the follow-up exposes a gap, record the gap rather than closing it retroactively.
Compare with the lecture's worked example
Asked what would happen to bread dough without salt, Elin — the fictional baker from the lecture — reasoned live: dough might rise faster with nothing slowing the yeast, but Elin also recalled that overly fast fermentation can weaken a dough rather than improve it. That connection was not in Elin’s original prepared explanation.
The useful comparison is not whether your answer matches Elin’s content — your topic is different — but whether your answer to the follow-up did new work that your step-1 explanation did not need to do. If it did, that is better evidence of a working model than step 1 alone. If it mostly restated step 1 with a “such as” attached, the follow-up did not find a gap this time; say so plainly rather than inventing one.
4. Optional: run it on a partner instead#
If you have a partner, swap roles: one person writes and reads aloud their prepared explanation, the other invents and asks the follow-up on the spot (same rule — name a condition, ask what happens if it does not hold). This adds a second observer, which the solo version lacks.
It does not remove the core limitation. A partner who devised a good follow-up still cannot see what was in your head before you answered it; they can only judge the answer you produced, exactly as the solo version asks you to judge your own. State in your record which version you used.
5. Keep a short record — 5 minutes#
| Field | What to write |
|---|---|
| Topic | What you chose to explain, and why you were confident in it |
| Prepared explanation | Your step-1 wording, preserved exactly |
| Follow-up | The condition you named and the question you built from it |
| Answer | Your step-3 response, preserved exactly, including if it exposed a gap |
| Observation | What you actually wrote in steps 1 and 3 |
| Interpretation | What specific ability the follow-up answer supports, beyond step 1 |
| Limit | Whether you can tell if the follow-up reasoning existed before you were asked, or was assembled while answering — and why that is genuinely unclear |
| Mode | Solo or with a partner, and what that choice loses |
For example: “I explained why a bicycle stays upright when moving. Asked what would happen at walking pace, I realised my explanation had assumed enough speed and didn’t say why — that’s a gap, not a success. This shows my explanation covered one case, not the general one. I did this alone, so I cannot rule out that I quietly revised my memory of step 1 while writing step 3.”
6. Read further#
For the study this activity adapts, read Rozenblit and Keil’s account of their own diagnostic-question step: Rozenblit & Keil (2002), Study 1. Ask: why does an unforeseen question reveal more than a self-generated explanation alone, and what does it still leave the researchers unable to claim about a participant’s prior state?
The spec
What you bring to the session. Written so a reader can tell whether it has been met without asking you.
- write a prepared explanation of a self-chosen topic before seeing the follow-up
- answer an unannounced follow-up question about the same topic
- record an observation, interpretation and a limit that names what remains unseparated
- state whether the activity was completed alone or with a partner, and what that choice loses