The study investigated the ability of 39 subjects to indicate their own future moves on a problem-solving task. Subjects solved the Hobbits-Orcs problem until they reached a criterion of two errorless consecutive attempts. The errors that were made by subjects in predicting their own future moves can be well accounted for by a computer simulation which assumes a fixed order of the desirability of all possible moves. It was concluded that there is no compelling evidence to suggest that humans have any need to look ahead in order to solve the Hobbits-Orcs problem.
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