Individual differences in deductive reasoning: Formal and Thematic Wason's THOG problems

  1. Valiña García, María Dolores
  2. Seoane Pesqueira, María Gloria
  3. Martín Rajo, Montserrat
  4. Rodríguez González, María Soledad
  5. Ferraces Otero, María José
Proceedings:
XIII Conference of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology
  1. Teresa Bajo (ed. lit.)
  2. Juan Lupiáñez (ed. lit.)

Publisher: Universidad de Granada

Year of publication: 2003

Type: Conference paper

GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openMINERVA editor

Abstract

This study forms part of a wider research project aimed atinvestigating relationships between cognitive skills and performance onexperimental reasoning tasks (Stanovich, 1999; Stanovich & West, 1998).The study aims to replicate and expand our previous studies of individualdifferences, both in conditional reasoning (Seoane, Valiña, Ferraces &Martín, 1997; Valiña, Seoane, Ferraces & Martín, 1993; 1995; 2000) anddisjunctive reasoning (Martín, Seoane, Valiña & Ferraces, 1998; Martín &Valiña, 2002; 2003).Specifically, this study centred on individual differences in areasoning task: The THOG problem (Wason, 1977; Wason & Brooks,1979). This is one of the tasks conceived by Peter Wason to “explore thenature of thought” (Evans & Johnson-Laird, 2003, p. 178).Concretely, the aims of this study were: (1) To investigate therelationships between the subjects´ performance on various computerizedtests of cognitive abilities and the subjects´ reasoning with the THOGproblem, and (2) to analyze the influence of rule content (formal anddifferent thematic versions of the task) and instructions (standard / oneother)on the subjects´ performance with the THOG problem