The effect of thematic content on the ‘Wason selection task’

This paper concerns the differential effects of use of ‘thematic’, rather than abstract (symbolic), content on the ‘Wason selection task’. An effect of thematic content has been reported several times, originally by Wason & Shapiro (1971), but Manktelow & Evans (1979) report five experiments that failed to obtain an effect and argue against the validity of the content effect in general. However, it is pointed out that four of their experiments use a novel content and that there are previous reports of non-effective content in the literature. It is concluded that a particular type of thematic content cannot be treated as a ‘random sample’ of thematic content in general, and that their argument thus rests upon their failure to produce an effect of the specific (’towns and transport’) content used by Wason and Shapiro. This produces an essentially empirical controversy which is settled in two ways. First, Manktelow and Evans’s criticisms of two previous replications are shown to be misleading. Second, an experiment is reported that exactly copies the Wason and Shapiro design and produces a significant effect of content. It is concluded that the Manktelow and Evans result most probably was due to a Type 2 error. Finally, a hypothesis is developed to account for both the effect of certain types of content and the lack of effect of others, including that used in Manktelow and Evans’s first four experiments.     

Memory cueing and instructional effects on Wason’s selection task

The present study examined the hypothesis that violation and role-playing instructions are necessary conditions for facilitation on Wason’s selection task and that facilitation due to memory cueing via thematic content is secondary. The results of a factorial experiment employing these factors did not support the hypothesis. Memory cueing was indicated as the primary factor, but violation instructions did increase the amount of facilitation observed. This interactive effect and the nature of facilitation by memory cueing are briefly discussed.     

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.     

Facilitation in Wason’s selection task: Content and instructions

Two experiments investigated the influence of rule content and instructions on subjects’ ability to reason about conditional rules. Experiment 1 had subjects determine whether two rules were “true or false” or whether two rules were being “violated.” Subjects had direct experience with one rule and indirect experience with the other. Performance was superior with direct experiential rules and with violation instructions. Experiment 2 was conducted to determine whether violation instructions could facilitate correct selections with content for which subjects had no experience. Subjects were presented with a familiar and unfamiliar rule. The results were consistent with those of Experiment 1. The possibility of a cognitive trade-off between rule familiarity and instructions is discussed.     

The logic of social exchange: has natural selection shaped how humans reason? Studies with the Wason selection task

In order to successfully engage in social exchange--cooperation between two or more individuals for mutual benefit--humans must be able to solve a number of complex computational problems, and do so with special efficiency. Following Marr (1982), Cosmides (1985) and Cosmides and Tooby (1989) used evolutionary principles to develop a computational theory of these adaptive problems. Specific hypotheses concerning the structure of the algorithms that govern how humans reason about social exchange were derived from this computational theory. This article presents a series of experiments designed to test these hypotheses, using the Wason selection task, a test of logical reasoning. Part I reports experiments testing social exchange theory against the availability theories of reasoning; Part II reports experiments testing it against Cheng and Holyoak's (1985) permission schema theory. The experimental design included eight critical tests designed to choose between social exchange theory and these other two families of theories; the results of all eight tests support social exchange theory. The hypothesis that the human mind includes cognitive processes specialized for reasoning about social exchange predicts the content effects found in these experiments, and parsimoniously explains those that have already been reported in the literature. The implications of this line of research for a modular view of human reasoning are discussed, as well as the utility of evolutionary biology in the development of computational theories.     

The effects of problem content,instructions, and verbalization procedure on Wason’s selection task

This study examined various hypotheses for facilitation on Wason’s four-card selection task by means of a factorial experiment. The factors were memory cuing vs. nonmemory cuing content, violation vs. true-false instructions, and verbalization procedure. The results indicated that memory cuing content may be a necessary and sufficient condition for facilitation, but that the amount of facilitation is affected by the type of instructions. Verbalization procedure had no effects, but this may have been due to the subjects’ failure to comply completely with the various verbalization instructions. An explanation of the results that assumes that content and instructions determine the cognitive processing load of the task and hence the solution strategies employed is considered.     

Structuring decision problems and the ‘bias heuristic’

This paper examines our understanding of the decomposition of immediate acts when structuring decision problems. Seven different types of uncertainties are identified, and four of these are shown to be taken explicitly into account in models within the province of decision theory, described in terms of four interlocking systems interfaced with semantic memory (a core act-event system, and systems buffering utilities, probabilities and events, respectively). Requisite decision modeling is shown to require that the remaining three types of uncertainty (procedural uncertainty; how the decision maker will feel about subsequent acts; agency for changing subsequent states of the world) are also resolved. Methods for ‘fixing’ structure are discussed in terms of aiming at a common understanding about the ‘small world’ in which a decision problem is located. Difficulties in resolving uncertainties in doing this are described. An alternative approach, common in studies invoking ‘behavioural decision theory’ is contrasted: imposing structure, assuming common understanding. The latter approach is shown to involve (i) the ‘naturalisation’ of the small world in which the decision problem is located, and (ii) the utilisation of normative models as ‘ideal types’, leading to the use of the ‘bias’ argument in discussing subjects' performance in decision tasks. Using this argument reflexively, the operation of the ‘bias heuristic’ is identified in a survey of published papers referencing this approach to the study of decision making. Effects identified are: availability of tasks, subjects and explanations; representativeness of findings; and anchoring and adjustment of explanations. Implications for practice are discussed throughout the paper.     

Effects of emotion regulation strategies on smoking craving, attentional bias, and task persistence

The goal of this study was to investigate the effects of different strategies for regulating emotions associated with smoking on subjective, cognitive, and behavioral correlates of smoking. Emotion regulation was manipulated by instructing participants to reappraise (n = 32), accept (n = 31), or suppress (n = 31) their emotions associated with smoking. The dependent measures included subjective reports of craving, negative affect, and attentional biases, as measured by a modified dot-probe task, and persistence during a task to measure distress tolerance. Individuals who were encouraged to reappraise the consequences of smoking showed diminished craving, lower negative affect, had reduced attentional biases for smoking-related cues, and exhibited greater task persistence than those who were instructed to accept and suppress their urge to smoke. These findings suggest that reappraisal techniques are more effective than acceptance or suppression strategies for targeting smoking-related problems.     

When the voluntary mind meets the irresistible event: Stimulus–response correspondence effects on task selection during voluntary task switching

In the present study, we investigated how task selection is biased by inherent stimulus characteristics in the voluntary task-switching paradigm. We used digits as the task stimuli, since they may automatically induce spatially horizontal representations of numbers. Specifically, we examined whether an irrelevant spatial representation of a number coincides with its associated response codes and whether such a stimulus–response (S–R) correspondence effect biases task selection for a digit. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two different action code layout conditions: Two numerical tasks were arranged as inner/outer in the horizontal layout condition or as upper/down in the vertical layout condition. Participants in the horizontal layout condition were more likely to choose a task when the task’s action code and the digit’s spatial representation corresponded, as compared with when they did not. On the other hand, no selection bias was observed in the vertical layout condition, since there was no overlapping spatial representation between the stimulus and response. The present study extends previous findings by considering the influence of the stimulus-driven effect on task selection with regard to the S–R correspondence effect.     

Facilitation versus inhibition in the masked priming same–different matching task

In the past years, growing attention has been devoted to the masked priming same–different task introduced by Norris and Kinoshita (2008 Norris, D. and Kinoshita, S. 2008. Perception as evidence accumulation and Bayesian inference: Insights from masked priming. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 137: 433–455. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], Journal of Experimental Psychology: General). However, a number of researchers have raised concerns on the nature of the cognitive processes underlying this task—in particular the suspicion that masked priming effects in this task are mostly inhibitory in nature and may be affected by probe–prime contingency. To examine the pattern of facilitative/inhibitory priming effects in this task, we conducted two experiments with an incremental priming paradigm using four stimulus–onset asynchronies (13, 27, 40, and 53 ms). Experiment 1 was conducted under a predictive-contingency scenario (probe–prime–target; i.e., “same” trials: HOUSE–house–HOUSE vs. house–water–HOUSE; “different” trials: field–house–HOUSE vs. field–water–HOUSE), while Experiment 2 employed a zero-contingency scenario (i.e., “same” trials: HOUSE–house–HOUSE vs. house–water–HOUSE; “different” trials: field–field–HOUSE vs. field–water–HOUSE). Results revealed that, for “same” responses, both facilitation and inhibition increased linearly with prime duration in the two scenarios, whereas the pattern of data varied for “different” responses, as predicted by the Bayesian Reader model.     

Does performance on the standard antisaccade task meet the co-familiality criterion for an endophenotype?

The “co-familiality” criterion for an endophenotype has two requirements: (1) clinically unaffected relatives as a group should show both a shift in mean performance and an increase in variance compared with controls; (2) performance scores should be heritable. Performance on the antisaccade task is one of several candidate endophenotypes for schizophrenia. In this paper we examine whether the various measures of performance on the standard version of the antisaccade task meet the co-familiality criterion for an endophenotype. The three measures of performance—reflexive saccade errors, latency of correct antisaccades, and gain—show a wide range of effect sizes and variance ratios as well as evidence of significant or near significant heterogeneity. The estimated mean effect sizes [Cohen’s d: error rate: 0.34 (SD: 0.29); latency: 0.33 (SD: 0.30); gain: 0.54 (SD: 0.38)] are significantly greater than 0, but the magnitude of the departures from 0 is relatively small, corresponding to modest effect sizes. The width of the 95% confidence intervals for the estimated effect sizes (error rate: 0.2–0.49; latency: 0.17–0.50; gain: 0.23–0.85) and the coefficients of variation in effect sizes (error rate: 85.3%; latency: 90.9%; gain: 68.4%) reflect heterogeneity in effect sizes. The effect sizes for error rate showed statistically significant heterogeneity and those for latency (P = .07) and gain (P = .09) showed a trend toward heterogeneity. These results indicate that the effect sizes are not consistent with a single mean and that the average effect size may be a biased estimate of the magnitude of differences in performance between relatives of schizophrenics and controls. Relatives of schizophrenics show a small but significant increase in variance in error rate, but the confidence interval is broad, perhaps reflecting the heterogeneity in effect size. The variance ratios for latency and gain did not differ in relatives of schizophrenics and controls. Performance, as measured by error rate, is moderately heritable. The data do not provide compelling support for a consistent shift in mean or variance in relatives of schizophrenia patients compared with nonpsychiatric controls, both of which are required for a major gene involved in co-familial transmission. This set of findings suggests that although intra-familial resemblance in antisaccade performance is due in part to genetic factors, it may not be related to a schizophrenia genotype. Based on the current literature, it would be premature to conclude that any of the measures of antisaccade performance unambiguously meets the co-familiality criterion for an endophenotype.     

Are phonological influences on lexical (mis)selection the result of a monitoring bias?

A monitoring bias account is often used to explain speech error patterns that seem to be the result of an interactive language production system, like phonological influences on lexical selection errors. A biased monitor is suggested to detect and covertly correct certain errors more often than others. For instance, this account predicts that errors that are phonologically similar to intended words are harder to detect than those that are phonologically dissimilar. To test this, we tried to elicit phonological errors under the same conditions as those that show other kinds of lexical selection errors. In five experiments, we presented participants with high cloze probability sentence fragments followed by a picture that was semantically related, a homophone of a semantically related word, or phonologically related to the (implicit) last word of the sentence. All experiments elicited semantic completions or homophones of semantic completions, but none elicited phonological completions. This finding is hard to reconcile with a monitoring bias account and is better explained with an interactive production system. Additionally, this finding constrains the amount of bottom-up information flow in interactive models.     

Are phonological influences on lexical (mis)selection the result of a monitoring bias?

A monitoring bias account is often used to explain speech error patterns that seem to be the result of an interactive language production system, like phonological influences on lexical selection errors. A biased monitor is suggested to detect and covertly correct certain errors more often than others. For instance, this account predicts that errors that are phonologically similar to intended words are harder to detect than those that are phonologically dissimilar. To test this, we tried to elicit phonological errors under the same conditions as those that show other kinds of lexical selection errors. In five experiments, we presented participants with high cloze probability sentence fragments followed by a picture that was semantically related, a homophone of a semantically related word, or phonologically related to the (implicit) last word of the sentence. All experiments elicited semantic completions or homophones of semantic completions, but none elicited phonological completions. This finding is hard to reconcile with a monitoring bias account and is better explained with an interactive production system. Additionally, this finding constrains the amount of bottom-up information flow in interactive models.     

Superstitious responding and frequency matching in the positive bias and gambler’s fallacy effects

Three studies showed that success in predicting outcomes of a random binary series was associated with the positive bias effect, whereas failure was associated with the gambler’s fallacy effect. Moreover, success increased confidence and failure decreased it. Although explicit instructions that the source generated random output increased the likelihood of predicting an alternation in the series, these instructions had no effect on the relationships between success and the positive bias effect, and failure and the gambler’s fallacy effect. Importantly, intuitions about the randomness or nonrandomness of the source, assessed immediately prior to each trial, did not influence this interaction. These results suggest that people used a win-stay strategy, but that sensitivity to run length counteracted the corresponding lose-shift tendency. The data support a memory-based explanation of the gambler’s fallacy effect, consistent with the account from local representativeness, but the positive bias effect may be an instance of human superstitious responding.     

Is the go/no-go lexical decision task an alternative to the yes/no lexical decision task?

In the go/no-go lexical decision task (LDT), participants are instructed to respond as quickly as they can when a word is presented and not to respond if a nonword is presented. By minimizing part of the response selection process in the experimental task, the impact of response decision time on the obtained lexical decision time is probably reduced relative to the standard yes/no LDT (Gordon, 1983). Experiments 1 and 2 show that the go/no-go LDT is sensitive to the effects of word frequency and associative priming--the magnitude of these effects is similar with the two tasks. More important, the go/no-go LDT has a number of advantages with respect to the "standard" yes/no LDT: It offers faster response times, more accurate responding, and fewer processing demands than does the yes/no task. Accordingly, the go/no-go task appears to be an excellent alternative to the standard yes/no task.     

Does half a pizza equal half a box of chocolates?: Proportional matching in an analogy task

There is now a considerable literature demonstrating analogical reasoning in children as young as 3 and 4 years of age. Here, we used analogy as a sensitive measure of proportional understanding in young children. In two experiments, we examined whether children's performance in a proportional analogy task would be affected when concrete models evoking different kinds of conceptual referents were used as the basis for the analogies. We chose two different conceptual referents (pizza and chocolates) of the kind typically used in fractions instruction. In both experiments, children were shown a base substance by the experimenter (e.g., a whole pizza) from which a proportion was then removed (e.g., a half pizza). Children were asked to complete the analogy by removing an equivalent proportion of their own target set (e.g., a whole box of chocolates changed to half a box of chocolates). This proportional matching paradigm resulted in analogy problems of the form: 8/8 pizza: 4/8 pizza: 4/4 box of chocolates:2/4 box of chocolates. Results indicated that 3- to 4-year-old children do have an emergent understanding of proportional equivalence, even when the materials to be matched are not isomorphic.     

Single‐prime negative priming in the shape‐matching task: Implications for the role of perceptual segmentation processes

Using the shape‐matching task developed by DeSchepper and Triesman (1996), Loula, Kourtzi, and Shiffrar (2000) demonstrated that negative priming only occurred in that task when minimal segmentation cues were available in the prime display. Loula et al. (2000) interpreted their results as revealing that negative priming in the shape‐matching task is directly caused by difficulty in segmenting the prime target from the prime distractor. We offer an alternative interpretation of their results, suggesting that a failure to observe negative priming when segmentation cues are present was incidental to the perceptual segmentation process. Instead, we provide evidence suggesting that an easier perceptual segmentation task contributes positive priming influences that makes a negative priming effect more difficult to observe. Once these positive priming influences are removed, we observed negative priming both when the perceptual segmentation task is trivial and when perceptual segmentation is not a component of the prime task at all.     

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.