Fig. 1

Decision tree representation of the best-fit model describing how students approached a multiple-choice (MC) and b multiple-true-false (MTF) questions. In the MC format, “A” represented selection of the correct statement. Students with mastery or partial mastery were modeled as selecting A in the MC format. Students outside these categories engaged in informed reasoning based on the attractiveness values of all the options. In the MTF format, “T” and “F” represent true and false answer selections for a question, with the first position referring to the answer to the true statement and the remaining positions referring to answers to the false statements in order of decreasing attractiveness. Students with mastery provided a fully correct answer of TFFF in the MTF format. Students with partial mastery answered TTFF, meaning they correctly said true for the true statement, incorrectly said true for the most attractive false statement, and correctly said false for the remaining false statements. Students outside the mastery and partial mastery categories engaged in informed reasoning alone based on the attractiveness of each statement. An additional group of students engaged in informed reasoning with endorsement bias, which restricted their responses to patterns with two true answers