Wason selection task

The Wason selection task provides evidence for the matching bias.

Another criticism is that there is little empirical support in favor of the domain-specific theory beyond performance on the Wason selection task.

The Wason selection task (or four-card problem) is a logic puzzle devised by Peter Cathcart Wason in 1966.

He designed logical problems and tests to demonstrate these processes, for example the Wason selection task, the THOG problem and the 2-4-6 problem.

Moreover, empirical support for the domain-specific theory stems almost entirely from performance on variations of the Wason selection task which is extremely limited in scope as it only tests one subtype of deductive reasoning.

However, it has been argued that many standard tests of reasoning, such as those on the conjunction fallacy, on the Wason selection task, or the base rate fallacy suffer from methodological and conceptual problems.

As of 1983, experimenters had identified that success on the Wason selection task was highly content-dependent, but there was no theoretical explanation for which content elicited mostly correct responses and which ones elicited mostly incorrect responses.

Cosmides and Tooby have adapted the Wason selection task to test for one aspect of propositional logic while ignoring general-purpose reasoning based on syllogistic logic, predicate logic, modal logic, and inductive logic.