The role of context on strategic actions in Mastermind

When inexperienced solvers play consecutive Mastermind games, they begin to use a strategy in which specific hypothetical types are offered in response to specific feedback types, a strategy known as the modal hypothesis strategy. When participants who had learned that strategy were shifted onto Mastermind games whose code format was different from, and easier than, that they had experienced, their use of the strategy was degraded despite their familiarity and experience in dealing with the specific feedback types occurring in the new code. The results suggest that the use of a domain-specific strategy is at least somewhat influenced by the match between the context in which the strategy has been acquired and the context in which it is being put to use.