十文钱问题再探

本研究设计了三个实验，探讨了被试在经典的十文钱问题以及与其异质同构的组团旅游问题中的推理情况。实验1通过调查法发现，被试在十文钱异质同构问题中表现出了与十文钱问题同样高的错误率，属于推理错觉问题。在此基础上，实验二、三就其推理错误的可能原因进行了实证探究，结果发现：（1）题目表面特征的弱化能显著提高被试的推理成绩。（2）批判性思维意识与批判性思维技巧的线索提示能显著提高被试的推理成绩。

A Further Study on the Ten-Penny Problem

The ten-penny problem,an old Chinese reasoning illusion problem,was investigated by Li and Zhang for the first time(2008),which indicated that only30% of the subjects succeeded in solving the problem,and resulted in a high error rate in the singleentry bookkeeping representation.However,the fact that most of the resolved-subjects also adopted the single-entry bookkeeping representation strategy was ignored in their studies.Therefore,it may not be appropriate to attribute the high error rate to the single-entry bookkeeping representation strategy.Based on the above analysis,three studies were conducted,and the chi-square test was used for most of the data analysis.In the first study,198 undergraduate students were asked to solve the ten-penny problem and its heterogeneous issue.They were also required to write down on a booklet their explanations for their solutions.In the second experiment,we changed the presentation of the original problem and the modified problem by weakening the statements for studying whether this change improved their reasoning performance.In the third study,we provided two different cues.One was an external perceptual cue that was embodied by underlining some key statements,and the other internal cue required the subjects to apply critical thinking skills to read and resolve the original problem and the modified problem in the instruction.The results of three experiments indicated that(1) the subjects showed a error rate as high as on the heterogeneous issue of the ten-penny problem;(2) weakening the version of the ten-penny problem significantly improved the correct rate of reasoning;(3) presenting critical thinking clues also significantly improved the subjects’ performance on the ten-penny problem.The results supported the hypotheses that the ten-penny problem was a reasoning illusion problem.The difficulty in solving this problem may be due to ① the surface character of the statement of the original problem and ② the lack of critical thinking skills for most of the participants.