An item response theory analysis of the four-card selection task

Abstract

The four-card selection task (Wason, 1966) is one of the best known tasks used in the literatures of human reasoning. This article analyzes this selection task by using item response theory (Lord & Novick, 1968). Japanese undergraduates (N = 323) responded six types of the Wason's selection tasks including indicative task (Wason, 1966), beer task (Griggs & Cox, 1982), and cassava task (Cosmides, 1989). An exploratory categorical factor analysis revealed a one factor structure of the six tasks. The results of an analysis using a two-parameter logistic model indicated that the indicative tasks were similar to the beer task and the cassava task in terms of the discrimination parameter, and that the relative difficulty between the tasks would varied according to the value of the ability parameter estimated by the two-parameter logistic model.