内容和形式对毒品成瘾者条件推理的影响

本研究通过比较推理内容与推理形式对毒品成瘾者推理成绩的影响,以探究影响毒品成瘾者能力成绩的主要内在机制。实验采用了2(四卡片形式vs选择项形式)×2(描述性规则vs社会契约规则)混合设计,以240名男性戒毒人员为研究对象,考察他们在不同推理内容与不同推理形式下的条件推理作业成绩。结果发现:(1)就规则内容来看,描述性规则内容在选择项形式上的得分好于四卡片形式,社会契约规则内容在两种呈现形式下的成绩没有显著差异;(2)就规则呈现形式来看,四卡片形式下的描述性规则得分显著地低于社会契约规则得分; 选择项形式下两类规则内容得分无显著差异。结果表明:毒品成瘾者的条件推理行为既受到推理内容的影响,也受到逻辑规则呈现形式的影响。     

条件推理和选择任务的关系：选择任务中的条件推理逻辑

要求大学生被试在相同的情境和规则下先后完成选择任务和条件推理任务,从而系统考察两项条件命题任务之间的关系。结果表明,当规则的语义表征意义为条件命题和反条件命题时,两项任务的反应模式具有一致性;当为双向条件和非条件命题时,两项任务的反应模式出现了分歧,而且四种推理形式和四张卡片之间不存在直接的对应关系。两项条件命题任务之间的关系表现在,它们可能享有共同的语义关系表征空间,但推理过程和策略有所不同。     

No interpretation without representation: the role of domain-specific representations and inferences in the Wason selection task

The Wason selection task is a tool used to study reasoning about conditional rules. Performance on this task changes systematically when one varies its content, and these content effects have been used to argue that the human cognitive architecture contains a number of domain-specific representation and inference systems, such as social contract algorithms and hazard management systems. Recently, however, Sperber, Cara & Girotto (Sperber, D., Cara, F., & Girotto, V. (1995). Relevance theory explains the selection task. Cognition, 57, 31-95) have proposed that relevance theory can explain performance on the selection task - including all content effects - without invoking inference systems that are content-specialized. Herein, we show that relevance theory alone cannot explain a variety of content effects - effects that were predicted in advance and are parsimoniously explained by theories that invoke domain-specific algorithms for representing and making inferences about (i) social contracts and (ii) reducing risk in hazardous situations. Moreover, although Sperber et al. (1995) were able to use relevance theory to produce some new content effects in other domains, they conducted no experiments involving social exchanges or precautions, and so were unable to determine which - content-specialized algorithms or relevance effects - dominate reasoning when the two conflict. When experiments, reported herein, are constructed so that the different theories predict divergent outcomes, the results support the predictions of social contract theory and hazard management theory, indicating that these inference systems override content-general relevance factors. The fact that social contract and hazard management algorithms provide better explanations for performance in their respective domains does not mean that the content-general logical procedures posited by relevance theory do not exist, or that relevance effects never occur. It does mean, however, that one needs a principled way of explaining which effects will dominate when a set of inputs activate more than one reasoning system. We propose the principle of pre-emptive specificity - that the human cognitive architecture should be designed so that more specialized inference systems pre-empt more general ones whenever the stimuli centrally fit the input conditions of the more specialized system. This principle follows from evolutionary and computational considerations that are common to both relevance theory and the ecological rationality approach.     

The task-specific nature of domain-general reasoning

This paper develops a theory of how interpretative processes constrain inferential performance on conditional reasoning tasks. Experiment 1 investigated the hypothesis that performance on common reasoning tasks is mediated by different interpretive variables. Necessity and sufficiency relations predicted performance on the conditional arguments task, whereas on the Wason task, performance was predicted by whether the conditional statement instantiated a deontic or a factual relation. Performance on the truth-table task was predicted by both sets of variables. Experiment 2 explored the mapping relation between interpretation, representation, and inference. It was observed that conditional responses to the Wason and arguments tasks were based on different representations of the conditional relationship. These data rule out a simple model of the interplay between interpretation and reasoning in which the interpretation of a statement is driven solely by its content, and instead, indicate that the interpretation of conditional relations is task-specific.     

Role of responsibility in conditional reasoning

A series of recent studies showed that facilitation on the Wason Selection Task could be produced by perceived utilities. The present work was aimed at testing whether a similar factor could also be involved in human reasoning performance in the context of responsibility. We supposed that the motivation of the subject assuming responsibility is affected by normative goals. These goals prescribe the actions and the results to be achieved, also considering the different social roles. In this experiment the responses of different groups of subjects (N = 270) to a selection task were compared in two different conditions involving different responsibility contexts. The results show that the subjects' strategies in searching for possible violators depended on the condition (responsibility vs no responsibility). In particular, only in the context of responsibility were the performances elicited by conditional rules characterised by a falsification strategy.     

Why are we good at detecting cheaters? A reply to Fodor

It is argued that the recent criticism by Fodor (Cognition 75 (2000) 29) of "cheater detection" in the Wason selection task is based upon a false presumption about what the task entails. Fodor compares two different ways of presenting the task, rather than two different task domains (social and non-social). Consequently, the conclusion that the selection task can tell us nothing about either the architecture or the history of cognition is invalid. Fodor's explanation of the Wason selection task is examined experimentally and compared to predictions derived from social contract theory (Cognition 31 (1989) 187). It is concluded that, although Fodor's variant of the Wason selection task improves performance, this improvement is independent of the task domain and is insufficient to account for the "cheater detection" effect.     

Reasoning versus text processing in the Wason selection task: A nondeontic perspective on perspective effects

We argue that perspective effects in the Wason four-card selection task are a product of the linguistic interpretation of the rule in the context of the problem text and not of the reasoning process underlying card selection. In three experiments, participants recalled the rule they used in either a selection or a plausibility rating task. The results showed that (1) participants tended to recall rules compatible with their card selection and not with the rule as stated in the problem and (2) recall was not affected by whether or not participants performed card selection. We conclude that perspective effects in the Wason selection task do not concern how card selection is reasoned about but instead reflect the inferential text processing involved in the comprehension of the problem text. Together with earlier research that showed selection performance in nondeontic contexts to be indistinguishable from selection performance in deontic contexts (Almor & Sloman, 1996; Sperber, Cara, & Girotto, 1995), the present results undermine the claim that reasoning in a deontic context elicits specialized cognitive processes.     

Toward a Cultural-Historical Perspective on the Selection Task

Independently of their age, individuals produce weak logical responses when they solve the Wason selection task. Many studies describe conditional reasoning, focusing on intra-individual and general processes. The role of meaning attributed to the situation or the linguistic interpretation of the rules have nevertheless been stressed by pragmatic studies. Few scattered studies show the role of collective situations, of subjects’ prior knowledge and of objects in solving the selection task. This paper goes back to the questions raised by the selection task and attempts to place past results into a cultural-historical theoretical framework, which defines a complex and evolving cognitive system, where human beings rely on social exchanges, equip themselves with cultural instruments, create intellectual tools, and give meaning to their experiences. Taking into account such a system is necessary to shed light upon the possibilities for the development of human thinking processes in order to solve selection tasks.     

Domain-specific reasoning: social contracts, cheating, and perspective change.

What counts as human rationality: reasoning processes that embody content-independent formal theories, such as propositional logic, or reasoning processes that are well designed for solving important adaptive problems? Most theories of human reasoning have been based on content-independent formal rationality, whereas adaptive reasoning, ecological or evolutionary, has been little explored. We elaborate and test an evolutionary approach. Cosmides' (1989) social contract theory, using the Wason selection task. In the first part, we disentangle the theoretical concept of a "social contract" from that of a "cheater-detection algorithm". We demonstrate that the fact that a rule is perceived as a social contract--or a conditional permission or obligation, as Cheng and Holyoak (1985) proposed--is not sufficient to elicit Cosmides' striking results, which we replicated. The crucial issue is not semantic (the meaning of the rule), but pragmatic: whether a person is cued into the perspective of a party who can be cheated. In the second part, we distinguish between social contracts with bilateral and unilateral cheating options. Perspective change in contracts with bilateral cheating options turns P & not-Q responses into not-P & Q responses. The results strongly support social contract theory, contradict availability theory, and cannot be accounted for by pragmatic reasoning schema theory, which lacks the pragmatic concepts of perspectives and cheating detection.     

The Influence of Linguistic Form on Reasoning: The Case of Matching Bias

A well-established phenomenon in reasoning research is matching bias : a tendency to select information that matches the lexical content of propositional statements, regardless of the logically critical presence of negations. Previous research suggested, however, that the effect might be restricted to reasoning with conditional statements. This paper reports two experiments in which participants were required to construct or identify true and false cases of propositional rules of several kinds, including universal statements, disjunctions, and negated conjunctions. Matching bias was observed across all rule types but largely restricted to problems where participants were required to falsify rather than to verify the rules. A third experiment showed a similar generalization across linguistic forms in the Wason selection task with only if conditionals substituted for universals. The results are discussed with reference to contemporary theories of propositional reasoning.     

Perspective effects in nondeontic versions of the Wason selection task

Perspective effects in the Wason four-card selection task occur when people choose mutually exclusive sets of cards depending on the perspective they adopt when making their choice. Previous demonstrations of perspective effects have been limited to deontic contexts--that is, problem contexts that involve social duty, like permissions and obligations. In three experiments, we demonstrate perspective effects in nondeontic contexts, including a context much like the original one employed by Wason (1966, 1968). We suggest that perspective effects arise whenever the task uses a rule that can be interpreted biconditionally and different perspectives elicit different counterexamples that match the predicted choice sets. This view is consistent with domain-general theories but not with domain-specific theories of deontic reasoning--for example, pragmatic reasoning schemas and social contract theory--that cannot explain perspective effects in nondeontic contexts.     

四卡问题的视角效应发生机制：领域一般性还是领域特殊性？

视角效应（Perspective Effects)是指四卡问题解决中,当被试从不同的角度对条件规则进行检验时,其选择偏向会在卡片p,q和-p,q之间发生稳定变化的现象。视角效应对四卡问题的解决有重要影响,但其存在条件及发生机制仍存在争议。本研究通过3个实验,探讨四卡问题中的视角效应。实验1和实验2采用混合实验设计,结果表明,转换社会契约、因果规则的四卡问题中,发现视角效应,抽象规则中,提供反例比提供充分必要条件更有利于产生视角效应。实验3在不同视角下研究四卡问题与条件推理的关系。结果表明,四卡问题与条件推理之间不具有逻辑一致性,产生分离现象。总之,视角效应在抽象规则和特定规则中均存在,而提供反例更有利于视角效应的产生。领域一般性或领域特殊性均不能有效解释视角效应的产生,两种机制的综合调节为解释视角效应提供新的角度。     

Context and rule manipulations on the Wason selection task

‘Food and drinks’ is a thematic content known not to produce differential performance to abstract content on the Wason selection task. To examine the effects of context on problem responses, this content was set in a ‘diet’ context, predicted to produce differential performance, and this context was compared both with the ‘food and drinks’ presentation previously used and with abstract content. Additionally, both conditional and universal rules were used, producing six cells to the design, 12 subjects being tested in each cell. Results revealed a significant difference between the rules (in the form a rule by content interaction), content having a significant effect only when the conditional rules were used. For these rules, subjects made significantly more correct solutions in the diet condition than in the abstract condition, whereas there was no evidence of differential performance between the (other) thematic and the abstract condition. Although it is admitted that no satisfactory explanation of the rule differences seems apparent, the effect of context observed is encouraging for this line of research. It is concluded that, as subjects are shown to be capable of coding the general idea of a counter-example into relevant specific selections, they are quite capable of solving the task, but that they fail to do so unless the solution is cued by, and its outcome would be consistent with, their pre-existing belief structures.     

The effects of experience on performance in Wason’s selection task

The Wason selection task is a hypothetico-deductive reasoning problem employing the logical rule of implication. Recent studies have indicated that performance on this task may be related to subjects’ experience with the task content. Five versions of the task that differed in the manner in which they were related to the subjects’ experience with a familiar implication relationship were examined. The correct solution rate varied as a function of both the subjects’ extraexperimental and intraexperimental experience. A memory-cuing/reasoning-by-analogy explanation is proposed to account for the direct relationship between performance and the degree of similarity to subjects’ experience.     

Reasoning about Conditional Promises and Warnings: Darwinian Algorithms, Mental Models, Relevance Judgements or Pragmatic Schemas?

It is proposed that reasoning about social contracts, such as conditional promises and warnings, is under the control of a compound schema made of two pragmatic schemas (Cheng & Holyoak, 1985), expressing an obligation and a permission. Two experiments were run using thematic versions of the Wason selection task in which the rule and the core of the scenario were kept constant and the point of view of the actor (e.g. promisor or promisee) was varied. The results supported the predictions (including the occurrence of a correct pattern of response that consists of all four cards) and falsified predictions derived from Cosmides' (1989) theory of social exchange. The mental models theory and Evans' two-stage theory of reasoning are also discussed in the light of the present results.     

道德和习俗领域幼儿义务推理的发展

采用Keller, Gummerum, Wang和Lindsey (2004)的不知情义务推理范式, 探讨了96名4、5、6岁幼儿对通过条件规则表述的鼓励性或禁止性的道德规则、以及习俗规则的义务推理能力的发展。结果表明：1)幼儿对两种不同领域规则的义务推理表现出基本一致的发展规律, 表现出显著的“角色效应”, 即多数幼儿都能指出同伴违反, 随年龄增大指出妈妈违反、双违反的人次百分比逐渐增多, 尤其是一些4岁幼儿就能正确指出道德和习俗领域中的妈妈违反, 部分5岁幼儿即可正确指出双违反。2)在不知情的义务推理范式下, 一些4岁幼儿错误指出本来是妈妈违反约定的情境中同伴违反、一些6岁幼儿错误指出本来是同伴违反约定的鼓励性规则情境中妈妈违反。3)尽管幼儿对道德和习俗规则的义务推理没有差异, 他们对不同性质社会规则的义务推理却表现出显著差异。5、6岁幼儿对禁止性的道德规则中同伴违反的检测显著低于对鼓励性的道德规则, 而6岁幼儿对双违反中妈妈违反的检测则相对更高; 6岁幼儿对习俗规则的义务推理也表现出类似的不同性质之间的差异。这些结果在一定程度上突破了以往的研究结论, 反映出幼儿对道德和习俗规则进行义务推理时表现出的跨领域的一般性及其领域内的特殊性。     

The Impact of Necessity and Sufficiency in The Wason Four-Card Selection Task

Performance in the Wason card selection task is often improved given thematic content. Such content effects have been considered evidence against human rationality. We propose that the role of content lies in specifying premises underlying "if P, then Q" rules. Unlike thematic rules, abstract conditional rules do not explicitly provide material interpretation (P is a sufficient but not necessarily a necessary condition for Q), resulting in nonnormative responses. When necessity–sufficiency relations were explicated, normative responses were elicited and effects of other logically irrelevant components disappeared. The results suggest that content effects are compatible with human rationality.     

Why we are so good at catching cheaters

Data that appear to exhibit a 'cheater detection' effect on performance in the Wason Selection task are widely interpreted as implying that deontic reasoning is effected by a domain specific, cognitive module. The 'cheater detection module' is said to offer a clear example of an effect of evolutionary selection on human cognitive architecture. This interpretation depends critically on assuming that deontic conditionals and their indicative controls are identical in structure; hence that the asymmetries in S's performance must be effects of content variables. I argue that this assumption is untrue and that structural features of deontic conditionals predict the 'cheater detection' data without assumptions about either the architecture or the history of cognition. According to this analysis, the putative cheater detection effect on the Wason task is actually a materials artifact.     

Use or misuse of the selection task? Rejoinder to Fiddick,Cosmides, and Tooby

Sperber, Cara, and Girotto (Cognition 52 (1995) 3) argued that, in Wason's selection task, relevance-guided comprehension processes tend to determine participants' performance and pre-empt the use of other inferential capacities. Because of this, the value of the selection task as a tool for studying human inference has been grossly overestimated. Fiddick, Cosmides, and Tooby (Cognition 77 (2000) 1) argued against Sperber et al. that specialized inferential mechanisms, in particular the "social contract algorithm" hypothesized by Cosmides (Cognition 31 (1989) 187), pre-empt more general comprehension abilities, making the selection task a useful tool after all. We rebut this argument. We argue and illustrate with two new experiments, that Fiddick et al. mix the true Wason selection task with a trivially simple categorization task superficially similar to the Wason task, yielding methodologically flawed evidence. We conclude that the extensive use of various kinds of selection tasks in the psychology of reasoning has been quite counter-productive and should be discontinued.     

Evidence of deontic reasoning in 3- and 4-year-old children

Deontic reasoning is reasoning about what one may, ought, or ought not do in a given set of circumstances. Virtually all of our social institutions and child-rearing practices presume the capacity to reason about deontic concepts, such as what is permitted, obligated, or prohibited. Despite this, very little is known about the development of deontic reasoning. Two experiments were conducted that contrasted children’s reasoning performance on deontic and indicative reasoning tasks (i.e., the reduced array selection version of the Wason card selection task). Like adults, children as young as 3 years of age were found to adopt a violation-detecting strategy more often when reasoning about the deontic case than when reasoning about the indicative case. These results indicate that violation detection emerges as an effective deontic reasoning very early in human development.