Much research has been conducted by P. C. Wason and his followers that studies subjects' responses to a selection task. Most of this research excludes from consideration any subjects who had been exposed to a formal study of logic. It had been observed, by the author of this study, that those who had taken a course in logic were also subject to the same errors. Therefore this study included some instruction in symbolic logic. / The subjects for this experiment were a group of college students taking a course in Finite Mathematics. The instructional part of the experiment consisted of six class sessions in symbolic logic. Two posttests were given after the instruction. The first posttest contained question on symbolic logic and a question on a selection task. The success rate for the symbolic logic was very high. The selection task had a low success rate and very similar to the earlier results reported by Wason and his followers. / Because it was anticipated that errors would be made on the selection task, a second posttest was given to attempt to locate the source of error. The purpose of the second posttest was to find out if the subjects were able to identify, as equivalent, verbalizations in a variety of structural forms. The four structural forms selected for this posttest were: causally related, unrelated, perverse, and abstract. The overall performance of the subjects on this task indicated that they had a great deal of difficulty in identifying the equivalent forms. An open question as a result of the study is whether the low success rate was caused by lack of ability to translate the equivalent forms into symbolic form or by the individuals attempting to answer the question of equivalence without reference to the logic that they had learned. / The study did reveal that subjects, with previous experience in logic, do not have any apparent superior performance on the selection task. The study also reveals that these subjects had a great deal of difficulty in recognizing logically equivalent statements when stated verbally. It is left to further investigation to determine the cause of the high error rate. The subjects had not been given any practice in translating the verbal statements into symbolic form and thus it could have been lack of ability. Experience in such translation could greatly improve the results. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 42-06, Section: A, page: 2547. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1981.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_74510 |
| Contributors | KENISON, PAUL EDSON., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 160 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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