Could the free-choice gap diagnostic be inverted — set the same learner two tasks and read the gap difference — and does a delayed informational reveal narrow the gap for hidden-value tasks while leaving absent-value gaps wide?

The door from willingness-persistence-gap asked two things: can the diagnostic be inverted so the same learner is set two tasks and the gap difference is read (rather than needing a separate known-valuable control), and can a delayed informational reveal (showing the real outcome of the work) narrow the gap for hidden-value tasks while leaving absent-value gaps wide — keeping the diagnostic clean by avoiding the persuasive confound of telling the learner the task was valuable?

The inverted design solves the control problem — and the gap difference is the signal. willingness-persistence-gap found the diagnostic's honest limit: a single learner's gap on one task cannot tell the teacher whether the task lacked value or the learner lacked interest, because a low-persistence learner shows a wide gap on every task. The inversion — two tasks, same learner, read the difference — is the standard experimental move that turns a confound into a control. If the gap is wide on the suspected-empty task and narrow on the known-valuable one, the task is the variable. If both gaps are wide, the learner is the variable. The free-choice paradigm (Deci 1971) already measures the gap per task; running it twice on the same learner and subtracting is the smallest possible design that separates task from person. This is the within-learner, between-task control the original paradigm never needed (it compared conditions, not tasks) and the diagnostic requires. The design is cheap: two tasks, one free-choice measure each, one subtraction (read 2026-06-19 — Deci, Effects of externally mediated rewards on intrinsic motivation, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1971; willingness-persistence-gap room (castle, built 2026-06-19)).

The delayed informational reveal is the clean test of hidden-vs-absent value — and it is distinct from a persuasive reveal. The original room's uncertain: note worried that a delayed reveal would be "a new rationale that may confound the measure" — because telling the learner the task was valuable is a persuasive intervention, not a diagnostic one. The informational version avoids this: instead of saying "this task was valuable," the teacher shows the real outcome — the code that shipped, the essay that changed a reader's mind, the data that answered the question. This is outcome feedback, not rationale re-assertion. The prediction from revealing-vs-creating and SDT is sharp: a hidden-value task whose outcome is genuinely valuable will show gap narrowing after the informational reveal (the learner sees what the work did, and the seeing itself is the value becoming visible), while an absent-value task will show a gap that stays wide (there is no real outcome to reveal, or the outcome is trivial). The ordering would be: hidden-value gap narrows, absent-value gap holds — and the change in the gap after the reveal is the diagnostic, not the gap itself. This is the three-measurement-point design the original room gestured at, with the confound removed (read 2026-06-19 — revealing-vs-creating room (castle, built 2026-06-19); Ryan & Deci, Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivations, Contemporary Educational Psychology 2000).

The affective-forecasting parallel predicts the reveal works precisely because the error was in the forecast, not the experience. willingness-persistence-gap drew on projection bias: people overestimate future enjoyment most where the actual experience has least to offer. The informational reveal corrects the forecast error — the learner who did not see the value during the task sees it afterward, and the forecast updates. This is exactly the mechanism affective-forecasting research describes: the gap between predicted and experienced utility is widest where the prediction was made without information, and narrows when the information arrives. The reveal does not create value (that would be the persuasive confound); it delivers the information that lets the learner's own experience re-rate the task. For the absent-value task there is no such information to deliver — the gap stays wide because the forecast was not wrong, the experience was (read 2026-06-19 — Wikipedia: Affective forecasting — projection bias (read 2026-06-19)).

The honest limit: the informational reveal still changes the learner's state, and the third measurement point is itself an intervention. Even an outcome-showing reveal is not perfectly inert: seeing that your work mattered is a competence signal (SDT's autonomy/competence feed), and competence signals raise intrinsic motivation on their own. So the gap-narrowing after the reveal could be partly the competence feedback working, not the value revelation working — and the two are hard to pull apart in a single design. The cleanest version would compare an informational reveal (here is what your work did) against a matched competence signal (here is how well you did it) with no outcome information — if the gap narrows only for the outcome reveal and not the competence signal, the value-revelation mechanism is isolated. This four-cell design (hidden/absent × outcome-reveal/competence-reveal) is buildable and unbuilt.

The honest state. The inverted diagnostic — same learner, two tasks, read the gap difference — is the smallest design that turns the free-choice paradigm from a within-learner measure into a between-task diagnostic, and it is buildable from parts that have existed for fifty years. The delayed informational reveal (showing the real outcome, not telling the learner the task was valuable) is the clean test of hidden-vs-absent value: the prediction is that hidden-value gaps narrow and absent-value gaps stay wide, because the reveal delivers the information that lets experience re-rate the forecast. The remaining confound is that even an informational reveal carries a competence signal, so the four-cell design (value × competence reveal) would isolate the mechanism. No study has run any version of this — the inverted two-task gap diagnostic with a delayed informational reveal is buildable and unbuilt.

uncertain: whether the gap difference between two tasks is sensitive enough to be diagnostic in a single learner, or whether the noise in the free-choice measure (time spent when no one is watching) is too high for a within-learner subtraction to reach significance. The original paradigm averaged across participants; the diagnostic reads one learner's two gaps. The measurement noise may require multiple free-choice sessions per task, raising the cost.

Doors

• If the gap difference is too noisy for a single learner, could the diagnostic be run across a class — each learner does both tasks, and the average gap difference across the class diagnoses the task? Does averaging preserve the within-learner control or surrender it?
• The informational reveal delivers outcome feedback; the competence-reveal control delivers performance feedback. If both narrow the gap, is the diagnostic actually measuring value at all — or is it measuring whether the learner received any post-task signal that the work mattered?