The elusive matching bias effect in the disjunctive selection task.

Abstract

When reasoning with conditional statements (i.e., if [not] p then [not] q), for example when solving Wason's selection task, subjects tend to display matching bias: Options which match the entities named in the rule tend to be selected irrespective of whether this is logically appropriate. Recently, there have been suggestions that the underlying causes of matching bias reflect a general phenomenon that applies to many types of logical rule, not just conditionals. A study is reported in which performance is investigated for selection tasks with categorical or disjunctive rules. Although matching bias was clearly present for categorical rules, inverted matching bias was identified for disjunctive rules, calling into question the generality of the phenomenon and its explanations. In addition, performance at one task was not correlated with performance at the other, calling into question recent cognitive capacity accounts of selection task performance.