Exploring the determinants of dual goal facilitation in a rule discovery task

Wason's standard 2-4-6 task requires discovery of a single rule and leads to around 20% solutions, whereas the dual goal (DG) version requires discovery of two rules and elevates solutions to over 60%. We report an experiment that aimed to discriminate between competing accounts of DG facilitation by manipulating the degree of complementarity between the to-be-discovered rules. Results indicated that perfect rule complementarity is not essential for task success, thereby undermining a key tenet of the goal complementarity account of DG facilitation. The triple heterogeneity account received a good degree of support since more varied triple exploration was associated with facilitatory DG conditions, in line with this account's prediction that task success is associated with the creative search of the problem space. The contrast class account (an extension of Oaksford & Chater's, 1994, iterative counterfactual model) was also corroborated in that the generation of descending triples was demonstrated to be the dominant predictor of DG success. We focus our discussion on conceptual ideas relating to the way in which iterative counterfactual testing and contrast class identification may work together to provide a powerful basis for effective hypothesis testing.     

Dual-goal facilitation in Wason's 2–4–6 task: What mediates successful rule discovery?

The standard 2–4–6 task requires discovery of a single rule and produces success rates of about 20%, whereas the dual-goal (DG) version requests discovery of two complementary rules and elevates success to over 60%. The experiment examined two explanations of DG superiority: Evans' (1989) positivity-bias account, and Wharton, Cheng, and Wickens' (1993) goal-complementarity theory. Two DG conditions were employed that varied the linguistic labelling of rules (either positively labelled Dax vs. Med, or mixed-valence “fits” vs. “does not fit”). Solution-success results supported the goal-complementarity theory since facilitation arose in both DG conditions relative to single-goal tasks, irrespective of the linguistic labelling of hypotheses. DG instructions also altered quantitative and qualitative aspects of hypothesis-testing behaviour, and analyses revealed the novel result that the production of at least a single descending triple mediates between DG instructions and task success. We propose that the identification of an appropriate contrast class that delimits the scope of complementary rules may be facilitated through the generation of a descending instance. Overall, our findings can best be accommodated by Oaksford and Chater's (1994) iterative counterfactual model of hypotheses testing, which can readily subsume key elements of the goal-complementarity theory.     

Factorial invariance and significance

It is shown that invariance requirements remove the indeterminacy in factor determination and lead to an integration of factorial studies with promise of considerable reduction in computational labor. The selection of significant primary factors is discussed, with special reference to Thurstone's simple structure criterion.     

Social status,cognitive ability,and educational attainment as predictors of liberal social attitudes and political trust

We examined the prospective associations between family socio-economic background, childhood intelligence (g) at age 11, educational and occupational attainment, and social attitudes at age 33 in a large (N = 8804), representative sample of the British population born in 1958. Structural equation Modeling identified a latent trait of ‘liberal social attitudes’ underlying attitude factors that are antiracist, socially liberal, and in support of gender equality. Another attitude factor—‘political trust’—was relatively independent from the latent attitude trait and has somewhat different pathways in relation to the other variables included in the analysis. There was a direct association between higher g at age 11 and more liberal social attitudes and political trust at age 33. For both men and women the association between g and liberal social attitudes was partly mediated via educational qualifications, and to a much lesser extent via adult occupational attainment. For women the association between g and political trust was partly mediated through both educational qualification and occupational attainment, and for men it was mediated mainly via occupational attainment. Men and women who had higher educational qualifications and higher occupational status tend to be more socially liberal and more trusting of the democratic political system. In terms of socio-economic background, people from less privileged families showed less political trust, but did not differ much in liberal social attitudes from those born into relatively more privileged circumstances. This study shows that social background, cognitive ability, education, and own social status influence perceptions of society.     

Inflated and contradictory category naming deficits in Alzheimer's disease?

Although some studies have documented category-specific deficits in patients with Alzheimer's disease, others have not. One possible reason is that where control groups have been used in previous studies, they have performed at ceiling; and this may spuriously affect the incidence and type of deficit reported (especially with common statistical techniques such as z-scores). We examined this issue in 18 Alzheimer's patients and 26 elderly controls, who named two picture sets: a simple set that typically produces ceiling effects (Set 1) and one that produces a normal distribution in controls (Set 2). Sets 1 and 2 produced inconsistent and even contradictory deficits in the same patients. The results also show that ceiling effects may inflate the number of living thing deficits and hence, distort the reported ratio of living to nonliving cases.     

"... As you would have them do unto you": Does imagining yourself in the other's place stimulate moral action?

Philosophers, psychologists, and religious teachers have suggested that imagining yourself in another's place will stimulate moral action. The authors tested this idea in two different situations. In Experiment 1, participants had the opportunity to assign themselves and another research participant to tasks, with one task clearly more desirable than the other. Imagining oneself in the other's place did little to increase the morality (fairness) of the decision. A different form of perspective taking, imagining the other's feelings, increased direct assignment of the other to the desirable task, apparently due to increased empathy. In Experiment 2, participants confronted a different decision: either accept an initial task assignment that would give them highly positive consequences and the other participant nothing or change the assignment so they and the other would each receive moderately positive consequences. In this situation, imagining oneself in the other's place did significantly increase moral action.     

Filling in the Gaps: Listening Through Dialogue

Over the past 30 years, technology has been introduced into higher education shifting the ways in which learning and student engagement occurs. While the literature suggests that technology offers benefits for improving educational outcomes, few studies have examined how benefits are achieved. This case study presents how the students and instructor of a course on postmodern theory and family therapy developed a praxis-based approach using a digital platform to improve pedagogy. Specifically, using a reflective approach based on ethnomethodology, this paper presents how the members of this course achieved a transformative generative dialogue using an online, simultaneous multi-user document, file-sharing and editing platform. This paper stresses the importance of all members of a course participating in the use of an interactive technological platform to facilitate open dialogue and collaboration.