The Mechanisms and Boundary Conditions of the Einstellung Effect in Chess: Evidence from Eye Movements
Figure 1
The four experimental problems (1,2,3,4).
White is to move in all problems. As discussed in the text, each problem contained a familiar move (i.e., the Einstellung move) that was associated with a checkmate solution that was not possible due to the position of Black’s defenders. The Einstellung moves were always located within the target region (shown here with a dotted line). For problem 1, the Einstellung move was a reasonable move (i.e., Ba7), and for the remaining problems the Einstellung moves were blunders (i.e., Problem 2: Qg7; Problem 3: Qa7 or Qa8; Problem 4: Rg8 or Nf7). For all four problems, the optimal move on the board was located outside of the target region (i.e., Problem 1: Ng2; Problem 2: Na3; Problem 3: Rg5; Problem 4: Rb3). See Appendix S1 for further details.