Explanations of Performance On The Task
In Wason's study, not even 10% of subjects found the correct solution. This result was replicated in 1993.
Some authors have argued that participants do not read "if... then..." as the material conditional, since the natural language conditional is not the material conditional. (See also the paradoxes of the material conditional for more information.) However one interesting feature of the task is how participants react when the classical logic solution is explained:
- A psychologist, not very well disposed toward logic, once confessed to me that despite all problems in short-term inferences like the Wason Card Task, there was also the undeniable fact that he had never met an experimental subject who did not understand the logical solution when it was explained to him, and then agreed that it was correct.
This latter comment is also controversial, since it does not explain whether the subjects regarded their previous solution incorrect, or whether they regarded the problem sufficiently vague to have two interpretations.
Read more about this topic: Wason Selection Task
Famous quotes containing the words explanations of, explanations, performance and/or task:
“In the nineteenth century ... explanations of who and what women were focused primarily on reproductive events—marriage, children, the empty nest, menopause. You could explain what was happening in a woman’s life, it was believed, if you knew where she was in this reproductive cycle.”
—Grace Baruch (20th century)
“Financiers are great mythomaniacs, their explanations and superstitions are those of primitive men; the world is a jungle to them. They perceive acutely that they are at the dawn of economic history.”
—Christina Stead (1902–1983)
“Having an identity at work separate from an identity at home means that the work role can help absorb some of the emotional shock of domestic distress. Even a mediocre performance at the office can help a person repair self-esteem damaged in domestic battles.”
—Faye J. Crosby (20th century)
“In a period of a people’s life that bears the designation “transitional,” the task of a thinking individual, of a sincere citizen of his country, is to go forward, despite the dirt and difficulty of the path, to go forward without losing from view even for a moment those fundamental ideals on which the entire existence of the society to which he belongs is built.”
—Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1818–1883)