Sure, good idea.
The first question that comes to mind is one that I do with pretty much every person I tutor and it is usually one of the first ones I do in part because it gives me a good sense for how they approach questions and gets to the heart of the issue here (about immediately copying information from the question stem). The question is:
If x>0, then x/50 + x/25 is what percent of x?
A) 6%
B) 25%
C) 60%
D) 75%
E) 90%
Many people when they see this question immediately copy down the fractions and then begin to try to add them (most are able to do that without too much difficulty, though I have had plenty of students who are not). People who are at the higher levels are then usually able to solve it from there, but people who are less comfortable with fractions and percents often get stuck. Some muscle through and get to the answer but many do not and people usually spend more time on the question than they need to. However, occasionally I get a student who looks at the question, thinks about it for a bit, and then realizes that they can pick numbers - and if they think carefully enough about what number to pick then the question can be answered in literally 10 seconds without even writing anything down. When I see a student like that I usually know I am dealing with someone who is going to do well on the GMAT. If you pick a number that gets rid of the fraction entirely (such as 100) then in your head you can probably say 100/50 is 2, 100/25 is 4, and 2 +4 is 6. 6 is obviously 6% of 100 so the answer is A.
People who first copy down the fractions as they are written in the question almost never see this option because they have already biased themselves in an algebraic direction before they have even considered whether that is the right approach for them. Obviously that is the right approach for some people so I am not saying that everyone should pick numbers on this question, but in my opinion you really need to give yourself a chance to very open-mindedly consider your options before writing anything down because as you are writing you are not really thinking and once you have the information written down you may find that you are sort of unwittingly pulled in a certain direction.
I also coach people to look at the answer choices before writing anything down as well, because often the answer choices provide clues as to how to solve the question. The above question is not the best example, but the answer choices are spread fairly widely apart, so if a person were to consider the algebraic option on this question and think that they weren't sure how to do it, and if they couldn't think of any other way to attack the question, they could try to think of the question conceptually and make a guess (because with the answers spread apart as far as they are it may be possible to guess very effectively on this question). If you think about is x/50 means x divided by 50, so that is a very small fraction of x. Likewise, x/25 is obviously a very small fraction of x. So if you were to add those quantities together they would still represent a very small fraction or very small percent of x. Looking at the answers even 25% seems like it would be too high, so 6% would be a very good guess on this question. In my experience, someone who immediately copies down the information from the question is very, very unlikely to head down this path.
Again I am really talking more about PS questions here. I recommend a similar strategy for DS, but because DS questions often give you so much information to keep track of and because some people get overwhelmed and lost in taking stock of all of that information, for some people I think it is a good idea to write SOME information down (value vs. Y/N question, restrictions imposed, etc.) right away. And again obviously there may be some PS questions for which writing information down as you read would be a good idea (and perhaps for people who have particular difficulties maybe it would be called for), but I would honestly be hard-pressed to think of a GMAT PS question where I would suggest that the general GMAT-taker write information down as they read.
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