Investigating the effect of cognitive limitations on the final judgment of confidence at the end of problem-solving process

This paper aims to investigate the impact of working memory capacity and excessive cognitive load on people's confidence after solving the Tower of Hanoi puzzle. For this purpose, two groups with different levels of cognitive load were formed for the study, and Iranian students in the age range of 20 to 40 years from universities in Tehran province were included in this study. After assessing working memory capacity, subjects in both groups solved the computerized version of the Tower of Hanoi problem. At the end, through a questionnaire that was designed and made for this study, they evaluated their confidence in their performance. This study started in 2019 and ended after one and a half years. However, the study did not find any relationship between the capacity of their visual-spatial working memory and their self-confidence, either alone or in interaction with the cognitive load, but there is a two-way relationship between bearing additional cognitive load and increasing final confidence. Therefore, people who bear more cognitive load are more confident about their cognitive performance at the end of the Tower of Hanoi problem-solving process.