Thinking in opposites improves hypothesis testing performance in Wason's rule-discovery task.
We investigate whether hypothesis testing can be improved by a simple prompt to "think in opposites," a strategy suggested by a growing body of literature as being beneficial in various reasoning and problem-solving contexts. We employed Wason's rule-discovery task and designed three experimental co...
| Publicado en: | Memory & Cognition Vol. 53; no. 6; pp. 1927 - 1944 |
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| Autores principales: | , , |
| Formato: | Artículo |
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Springer Nature
Aug2025
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| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=187671959&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ssf uiTerm: 187671959 longDbName: Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 0090502X MEG jtl: Memory & Cognition issn: 0090502X maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Aug2025 vid: 53 iid: 6 pid: 237 pub: Springer Nature artinfo: ui: 187671959 10.3758/s13421-025-01691-3 ppf: 1927 ppct: 17 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 2.1MB tig: atl: Thinking in opposites improves hypothesis testing performance in Wason's rule-discovery task. aug: au: Branchini, Erika Bianchi, Ivana Burro, Roberto affil: https://ror.org/039bp8j42 Department of Human Sciences, University of Verona, Lungadige Porta Vittoria 27, 37129, Verona, Italy https://ror.org/0001fmy77 Department of Humanities (Section Philosophy and Human Sciences), University of Macerata, Corso Garibaldi 20, 62100, Macerata, Italy su: Task performance Problem solving Statistical hypothesis testing Hypothesis Thought & thinking sug: subj: Task performance Problem solving Statistical hypothesis testing Hypothesis Thought & thinking keyword: Hypothesis testing Inductive task Thinking in opposites Wason's rule-discovery task Hypothesis testing Inductive task Thinking in opposites Wason's rule-discovery task ab: We investigate whether hypothesis testing can be improved by a simple prompt to "think in opposites," a strategy suggested by a growing body of literature as being beneficial in various reasoning and problem-solving contexts. We employed Wason's rule-discovery task and designed three experimental conditions: training that prompted an analysis of the properties characterizing the initial seed triple, training that prompted the same analysis but subsequently required the identification of the opposites of each property for use in the testing phase, and a no-prompt condition. Thinking in opposites nearly doubled the success rate and led to a more frequent discovery of the rule on the first attempt. This improved efficacy was due not to the testing of more triples but to less reiteration of the same hypothesis and a greater awareness of the ascending-descending critical dimension. We discuss how thinking in opposites appears to stimulate counterfactual thinking, with respect to previous literature. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: N holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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