Oaksford, Mike and Chater, N. (1994) Another look at eliminative and enumerative behaviour in a conceptual task. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology 6 (2), pp. 149-169. ISSN 0954-1446.
Abstract
There are currently two competing interpretations of hypothesis testing in Wason's (1960) 2-4-6 task: the positivity heuristic (Klayman & Ha, 1987; 1989) and the counterfactual strategy (Farris & Revlin, 1989a; 1989b). We argue that an extension of the counterfactual strategy—the iterative counterfactual strategy—should be preferred over the positive test heuristic because it may resolve the paradox of why subjects succeed on this task while apparently adopting an irrational strategy. We argue that an account of hypothesis generation is required to explain these data and that only the counterfactual strategy is of help here. We discuss the strategy and the 2-4-6 task in the light of contemporary history and philosophy of science, highlighting the rational basis of the strategy and some unrealities of the task.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| School: | Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Science > School of Psychological Sciences |
| Depositing User: | Administrator |
| Date Deposited: | 19 Sep 2016 10:40 |
| Last Modified: | 02 Aug 2023 17:26 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/16087 |
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