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Facilitation in the Wason selection task with a consequent referring to an unsatisfactory outcome
Author(s) -
George Christian
Publication year - 1991
Publication title -
british journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.536
H-Index - 92
eISSN - 2044-8295
pISSN - 0007-1269
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8295.1991.tb02413.x
Subject(s) - outcome (game theory) , psychology , task (project management) , sentence , selection (genetic algorithm) , statement (logic) , value (mathematics) , facilitation , social psychology , cognitive psychology , statistics , natural language processing , computer science , artificial intelligence , linguistics , mathematical economics , mathematics , philosophy , management , neuroscience , economics
It is assumed that when the outcome mentioned in the consequent of a conditional statement refers to an unsatisfactory event, subjects may look for information about the other alternative and thus be prompted to select the q̄ card in the Wason selection task more often. Experiment 1 tested 80 adult subjects on four sentences where a change in wording was used to denote a change in the value of the outcome, for example: ‘if one chooses school P, one is sure of passing (failing) the exam’. Each subject had to solve the Wason selection task with four different sentences and two values of the outcome. For each sentence subjects were invited to assume they had a specified goal, for example to pass an exam. The frequency of the selection of the q̄ card was 64 per cent with an unsatisfactory outcome compared to 27 per cent with a satisfactory outcome, and the frequency of the correct answer pq̄ was 21 versus 6 per cent. In Expt 2 the effect of the outcome value was duplicated when a goal was specified, but was not significant when no goal was specified. The results are interpreted as showing that a goal assigns different degrees of pertinence to pieces of information.