ABSTRACT
The use of hints has long been advocated in pedagogical practice, but we know little about the psychological mechanisms and processes of hinting. Current cognitive models of hint generation are indeed very much at their infancy. Systematic research on hinting has periodically surfaced in the areas of problem solving and computer-assisted learning, but to date no theory has been formulated that can describe hints and explain the facilitative role they presumably play in learning. So two fundamental questions present themselves: How are good hints generated? How is learning affected by hints?
