Abstract
The present study examined the effectiveness of a tutoring technique that has been used to identify and address participants’ misunderstandings in Wason’s selection task. In particular, the study investigated whether the technique would lead to improvements in performance when the task was presented in a deadline format (a condition in which time restrictions are imposed). In Experiment 1, the effects of tutoring on performance were compared in free time (conditions in which no time restrictions are imposed) and deadline task formats. In Experiment 2, improvements in performance were studied in deadline task formats, in which the tutoring and test phases were separated by an interval of 1 day. The results suggested that tutoring improved performance on the selection task under deadline and in free time conditions. Additionally, the study showed that participants made errors because they had misinterpreted the task. With tutoring, they were able to modify their initial misunderstandings.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
Almor, A., &Sloman, S. (1996). Is deontic reasoning special?Psychological Review,103, 374–380.
Almor, A., &Sloman, S. (2000). Reasoning versus text processing in the Wason selection task: A nondeontic perspective on perspective effects.Memory & Cognition,28, 1060–1070.
Ball, L. J., Lucas, E. J., Miles, J. N. V., &Gale, A. G. (2003). Inspection times and the selection task: What do eye-movements reveal about relevance effects?Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 56A, 1053–1077.
Cheng, P. W., &Holyoak, K. J. (1985). Pragmatic reasoning schemas.Cognitive Psychology,17, 391–416.
Cheng, P. W., Holyoak, K. J., Nisbett, R. E., &Oliver, L. M. (1986). Pragmatic versus syntactic approaches to tutoring deductive reasoning.Cognitive Psychology,18, 293–328.
Cosmides, L. (1989). The logic of social exchange: Has natural selection shaped how humans reason? Studies with the Wason selection task.Cognition,31, 187–276.
Dominowski, R. L. (1995). Content effects in Wason’s selection task. In S. E. Newstead & J. S. B. T. Evans (Eds.),Perspectives on thinking and reasoning: Essays in honor of Peter Wason (pp. 41–65). Hove, U.K.: Erlbaum.
Evans, J. S. B. T. (1996). Deciding before you think: Relevance and reasoning in the selection task.British Journal of Psychology,87, 223–240.
Evans, J. S. B. T. (1998). Matching bias in conditional reasoning: Do we understand it after 25 years?Thinking & Reasoning,4, 45–82.
Evans, J. S. B. T. (2000). What could and could not be a strategy in reasoning. In W. Schaeken, G. De Vooght, A. Vandierendonck, & G. d’Ydewalle (Eds.),Deductive reasoning and strategies (pp. 1–22). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Evans, J. S. B. T., Ball, L. J., &Brooks, P. G. (1987). Attention bias and decision order in a reasoning task.British Journal of Psychology, 78, 385–394.
Evans, J. S. B. T., &Over, D. E. (1996).Rationality and reasoning. Hove, U.K.: Psychology Press.
Gebauer, G., &Laming, D. (1997). Rational choices in Wason’s selection task.Psychological Research,60, 284–293.
Gigerenzer, G., &Hug, K. (1992). Domain-specific reasoning: Social contracts, cheating, and perspective change.Cognition,43, 127–171.
Green, D. W. (1995a). The abstract selection task: Thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. In S. E. Newstead & J. S. B. T. Evans (Eds.),Perspectives on thinking and reasoning (pp. 173–188). Hove, U.K.: Erlbaum.
Green, D. W. (1995b). Externalisation, counter-examples and the abstract selection task.Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 48A, 547–574.
Green, D. W., &Larking, R. (1995). The locus of facilitation in the abstract selection task.Thinking & Reasoning,1, 183–199.
Griggs, R. A., &Cox, J. R. (1982). The elusive thematic-materials effect in Wason’s selection task.British Journal of Psychology,73, 407–420.
Johnson-Laird, P. N., &Wason, P. C. (1970). Insight into a logical relation.Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology,22, 49–61.
Johnston, W. A., Hawley, K. J., &Elliott, J. M. (1991). Contribution of perceptual fluency to recognition judgments.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory & Cognition,17, 210–223.
Mandler, G. (1980). Recognizing: The judgment of previous occurrence.Psychological Review,87, 252–271.
Margolis, H. (2000). Wason’s selection task with a reduced array.Psycoloquy,11(5).
Oaksford, M., &Chater, N. (1994). A rational analysis of the selection task as optimal data selection.Psychological Review,101, 608–631.
Oaksford, M., &Chater, N. (1996). Rational explanation of the selection task.Psychological Review,103, 381–391.
Osman, M. (2004). An evaluation of dual-process theories of reasoning.Psychonomic Bulletin & Review,11, 998–1010.
Osman, M., &Laming, D. (2001). Misinterpretation of conditional statements in Wason’s selection task.Psychological Research,65, 128–144.
Platt, R. D., &Griggs, R. A. (1995). Facilitation and matching bias in the abstract selection task.Thinking & Reasoning,1, 55–70.
Reber, R., &Schwarz, N. (2001). The hot fringes of consciousness: Perceptual fluency and affect.Consciousness & Emotion,2, 223–231.
Roberts, M. J. (1998). Inspection times and the selection task: Are they relevant?Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology,51A, 781–810.
Roberts, M. J., &Newton, E. J. (2001). Inspection times, the change task, and the rapid-response selection task.Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology,54A, 1031–1048.
Schroyens, W., Schaeken, W., &Handley, S. (2003). In search of counter-examples: Deductive rationality in human reasoning.Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology,56A, 1129–1145.
Sloman, S. A. (1996). The empirical case for two systems of reasoning.Psychological Bulletin,119, 3–22.
Stanovich, K. E. (1999)Who is rational? Studies of individual differences in reasoning. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Stanovich, K. E., &West, R. F. (2000). Individual differences in reasoning: Implications for the rationality debate?Behavioral & Brain Sciences,23, 645–726.
Stenning, K., &van Lambalgen, M. (1999). Is psychology hard or impossible? Reflections on the conditional. In J. Gerbrandy, M. Marx, M. de Rijke, & Y. Venema (Eds.),Liber amicorum for Johan van Bentham’s 50th birthday (pp. 1–29). Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Stenning, K., &van Lambalgen, M. (2001). Semantics as a foundation for psychology: A case study of Wason’s selection task.Journal of Logic, Language, & Information,10, 273–317.
Stenning, K., &van Lambalgen, M. (2004). A little logic goes a long way: Basing experiment on semantic theory in the cognitive science of conditional reasoning.Cognitive Science,28, 481–529.
Verfaellie, M., &Cermak, L. (1999). Perceptual fluency as a cue for recognition judgments in amnesia.Neuropsychology,13, 198–205.
Wason, P. C. (1966). Reasoning. In B. M. Foss (Ed.),New horizons in psychology I (pp. 135–151). Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin.
Wason, P. C. (1968). Reasoning about a rule.Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology,20, 273–281.
Wason, P. C. (1969). Regression in reasoning?British Journal of Psychology,60, 471–480.
Wason, P. C., &Golding, E. (1974). The language of inconsistency.British Journal of Psychology,65, 537–546.
Wason, P. C., &Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1970). A conflict between selecting and evaluating information in an inferential task.British Journal of Psychology,61, 509–515.
Wason, P. C., &Shapiro, D. (1971). Natural and contrived experience in a reasoning problem.Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 23, 63–71.
Whittlesea, B. W. A. (1993). Illusions of familiarity.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,19, 1235–1253.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
The support of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) is gratefully acknowledged. The work was part of the program of the ESRC Centre for Economic Learning and Social Evolution.
Note—This article was accepted by the previous editorial team, when Colin M. MacLeod was Editor.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Osman, M. Can tutoring improve performance on a reasoning task under deadline conditions?. Memory & Cognition 35, 342–351 (2007). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193455
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193455