Do people reason on the Wason selection task? A new look at the data of Ball et al. (2003)

The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology : QJEP
Jonathan St B T Evans, Linden J Ball

Abstract

Despite the popularity of the Wason selection task in the psychology of reasoning, doubt remains as to whether card choices actually reflect a process of reasoning. One view is that while participants reason about the cards and their hidden sides-as indicated by protocol analysis-this reasoning merely confabulates explanations for cards that were preconsciously cued. This hypothesis has apparently been supported by studies that show that participants predominantly inspect cards which they end up selecting. In this paper, we reanalyse the data of one such study, which used eye-movement tracking to record card inspection times (Ball, Lucas, Miles, & Gale, 2003). We show that while cards favoured by matching bias are inspected for roughly equal lengths of times, their selection rates are strongly affected by their logical status. These findings strongly support a two-stage account in which attention is necessary but not sufficient for card selections. Hence, reasoning does indeed affect participants' choices on this task.

References

Aug 22, 2002·The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. A, Human Experimental Psychology·Simon J HandleyCatherine Harper
Oct 11, 2002·Psychological Review·P N Johnson-Laird, Ruth M J Byrne
Aug 26, 2003·The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. A, Human Experimental Psychology·Linden J BallAlastair G Gale
Dec 19, 2003·The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. A, Human Experimental Psychology·Stephen E NewsteadDaniel Farrelly
Oct 20, 2006·Psychonomic Bulletin & Review·Jonathan St B T Evans
Dec 8, 2007·Memory & Cognition·Jonathan St B T EvansDavid E Over
Dec 25, 2007·Annual Review of Psychology·Jonathan St B T Evans
Dec 17, 2008·The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology : QJEP·Jonathan St B T EvansDavid Over
Jul 1, 1975·Memory & Cognition·D J HermannB C Nelson

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Citations

Aug 28, 2014·PloS One·Teresa RomeroToshikazu Hasegawa
May 1, 2013·Perspectives on Psychological Science : a Journal of the Association for Psychological Science·Jonathan St B T Evans, Keith E Stanovich

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