The Experimental Study Of The Development Of Four Cards Of High School Students Reasoning Ability

Four cards problem was offered by Wason in 1966. From then on more and more psychologists were interested in the problem and committed themselves on it . They found many interesting results. Some of them had controversy on the effects of instruction. At the same time they were nearly neglected the development of the ability on Wason's Selection Task. So a experiment about the development was done.Two different propositions(one abstract and one concrete) with two kinds of instruction were used to study the development of Wason's Selection Task and the effects of instructions and the quality of material on task solving. Eight hundred and forty subjects were tested under four different experimental conditions. The results showed that (a) concrete content produced facilitation effect, (b) there was significant development on concrete material and the students of senior high school and university were more excellent than that of junior high school, (c) the forms of instruction affected the performance on Wason's Selection Task only when it was combined with concrete versions of the task.