THE WASON'S CARD TRICK

• Authors: Barkoczi Ilona
• Languages of publication: HU

Abstracts

EN

The study deals with the main problems of the Wason card sorting task, having been subject to permanent research since 1966, because dozens of researchers are not able to explain why about 90% of people cannot solve this simple task according to logical norms. The paper provides a brief survey of some general and concrete rule theories including their failures and controversies. Even the signs of hopelessness have emerged, but now it seems that the Johnson-Laird mental model theory gains support from two very different sources. The first comes from psychophysiology: while subjects solve abstract deductive tasks, PET and fMRI data show bilateral or right parietal activation in the in the activation pattern, a fact referring to spatially organized mental functioning. The other source comes from the study of individual differences: the ability of some people to generate alternative models correlates with performance in abstract reasoning tasks and this is the essence of the mental model theory.

Keywords

EN

CONTROVERSIES; MENTAL MODEL THEORY; RULE THEORIES; WASON CARD SORTING TASK

Discipline

• PSYCHOLOGY: PSYCHOLOGY

• Publisher: Hungarian Association for Psychology
• Journal: Magyar Pszichologiai Szemle (Hungarian Psychological Review)
• Year: 2006
• Volume: 61
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 299-314
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Barkoczi Ilona

• Ilona Barkoczi, no address given, contact the journal edito

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

10HUAAAA073214