Department of Educational Psychology
Date of this Version
December 1978
Abstract
In a recent article in this Journal, Brée & Coppens (1976) tested Brée’s (1973) model of performance on Wason’s extensively studied “four-card task.” The Brée model is of considerable interest in that it (a) differentiates comprehension of the proposition to be tested from the hypothesis- testing strategy itself (as do Smalley, 1974, and Moshman, 1977), and (b) is closely related to Piaget’s theory of formal operations (Inhelder & Piaget, 1958) in its consideration of combinatorial analysis (elaboration of possibilities) and hypothetico-deductive reasoning (reasoning based on possibilities rather than facts). Unfortunately, the test of the model is marred both by incorrect predictions and questionable exclusion of subjects from the data analysis.
Comments
Published in British Journal of Psychology 69 (1978), pp. 371–372. Copyright © 1978 British Psychological Society. Used by permission. http://www.bps.org.uk/publications/journals/bjp/bjp_home.cfm