The effect of experimentally contrived experience on reasoning performance

Summary

Recent research on reasoning has shown that problem content is highly effective in mediating responses. This has been interpreted as support for the idea that reasoning responses are a function of the subjects' prior experience. However, although compelling, this interpretation is based on indirect evidence. When differential responses are observed, consideration of the (thematic) contents employed often reveals that subjects would be expected to have had differential experience of these contents. Two experiments are reported here that test directly whether such differential responses are produced by subjects' experience. They made use of symbolic content on the Wason selection task, and manipulated subjects' prior experience of this via probability learning tasks. In both cases, this contrived experience was effective, although to some extent in different ways. In the first experiment, run on an on-line computer terminal, subjects selected significantly more cards on ‘false’ rules. In the second, which controlled for matching bias by using rules with systematically negated components, subjects selected significantly more FA and FC but fewer TA and TC on ‘false’ rules. In addition, relationships were found between card selections and speed of (probability) learning. In general, the results are seen as providing strong evidence for the role of experience in determining responses.