Research output: Contribution in Book/Report/Proceedings - With ISBN/ISSN › Chapter
Research output: Contribution in Book/Report/Proceedings - With ISBN/ISSN › Chapter
}
TY - CHAP
T1 - Does Positivity Bias Explain Patterns of Performance on Wason’s 2-4-6 Task?
AU - Gale, Maggie
AU - Ball, Linden J.
PY - 2002
Y1 - 2002
N2 - In the standard form of Wason’s (1960) 2-4-6 task, participants must discover a rule that governs the production of sequences of three numbers. Studies typically show success rates of approximately 20%, which Wason attributed to a cognitive deficit that he labeled ‘confirmation bias’. In Tweney et al.’s (1980) formally equivalent Dual Goal (DG) form of the task, however, success rates are at least double to those seen on the standard task. If this facilitated performance could be accounted for, then this would go some way toward explaining the normally low performance on the standard problem. The present experiment examined two competing accounts of the DG superiority effect: Evans’ (1989) positivity bias explanation, and Wharton, Cheng and Wickens’ (1993) goal complementarity theory. The experiment independently manipulated the number of goals that participants had to explore (a single goal vs. two complementary goals) and the linguistic labels used to provide feedback (DAX and MED vs. ‘fits the rule’ and ‘does not fit the rule’). Results supported the goal complementarity account in that facilitation was evident in both DG conditions irrespective of the polarity of the feedback provided. We also discuss a novel finding: that it is the production of at least a single ‘negative’ triple that is most closely associated with task success.
AB - In the standard form of Wason’s (1960) 2-4-6 task, participants must discover a rule that governs the production of sequences of three numbers. Studies typically show success rates of approximately 20%, which Wason attributed to a cognitive deficit that he labeled ‘confirmation bias’. In Tweney et al.’s (1980) formally equivalent Dual Goal (DG) form of the task, however, success rates are at least double to those seen on the standard task. If this facilitated performance could be accounted for, then this would go some way toward explaining the normally low performance on the standard problem. The present experiment examined two competing accounts of the DG superiority effect: Evans’ (1989) positivity bias explanation, and Wharton, Cheng and Wickens’ (1993) goal complementarity theory. The experiment independently manipulated the number of goals that participants had to explore (a single goal vs. two complementary goals) and the linguistic labels used to provide feedback (DAX and MED vs. ‘fits the rule’ and ‘does not fit the rule’). Results supported the goal complementarity account in that facilitation was evident in both DG conditions irrespective of the polarity of the feedback provided. We also discuss a novel finding: that it is the production of at least a single ‘negative’ triple that is most closely associated with task success.
M3 - Chapter
BT - Proceedings of the Twenty-Fourth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society
A2 - Gray, W. D.
A2 - Schunn, C.
PB - Lawrence Erlbaun Associates
CY - Mahwah, New Jersey
ER -