Perspectives On Thinking And Reasoning: Essays In Honour Of Peter Wason

by Newstead, S.

• ISBN13: 9780863773587
• ISBN10: 0863773583
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1995-07-01
• Publisher: Psychology Pres

Summary

This collection of essays focuses on three reasoning problems devised by Peter Wason - the selection task, the 2-4-6 task, and the THOG problem - which have had a considerable influence since their invention.; The reasons why people make so many errors in these seemingly simple tasks are still not fully understood. A variety of different theoretical perspectives have been used in trying to explain performance. These include the mental models approach, the pragmatic reasoning approach, and the mental logic approach. This book contains chapters which discuss all these theories. Other chapters review the literature or offer alternative theoretical perspectives. A final chapter by Peter Wason describes how he came to create the tasks discussed.

Table of Contents

Contributors
Creating a Psychology of Reasoning: The Contribution of Peter Wason	p. 1
The Effects of Rule Clarification, Decision Justification, and Selection Instruction on Wason's Abstract Selection Task	p. 17
Content Effects in Wason's Selection Task	p. 41
Pragmatic Reasoning about Human Voluntary Action: Evidence from Wason's Selection Task	p. 67
Deontic Reasoning	p. 91
Inference and Mental Models	p. 115
Relevance and Reasoning	p. 147
The Abstract Selection Task: Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis	p. 173
Finding Logic in Human Reasoning Requires Looking in the Right Places	p. 189
Hypothesis Testing	p. 217
Scientific Reasoning	p. 241
The THOG Problem and its Implications for Human Reasoning	p. 261
Creativity in Research	p. 287
Author Index	p. 302
Subject Index	p. 306
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