The positive after-effects of naturally occurring confusion in learning have been verified in
empirical studies, that is, naturally occurring confusion in learning process could drive cognitive efforts
to improve the learning result. However, under this research paradigm, the positive learning effect is more
passive and slow. The purpose of this study is to explore the experimental paradigm of actively eliciting
learners’ confusion and its positive effects on learning outcomes. In this study, normal university students
are selected as subjects, and the small group discussion problem solving learning situation is set up in the
intelligent tutoring system. By manipulating the contradictory information discussion script, the effect
of the eliciting state of confusion in the contradictory information discussion script on the promotion of
the learning result of problem solving was tested. The experimental results show that, the eliciting state
of normal university students’ productive confusion in the script of contradictory information discussion
can significantly improve the problem solving learning test scores.