NAMING THE PARENTS OF THE THOG - MENTAL REPRESENTATION AND REASONING

It was hypothesized that subjects misrepresent the THOG problem by con fusing data and hypotheses. An abstract version of the problem in whic h the given exemplars and the hypothetical ones were designated by two different labels was used in three experiments. Experiment 1 showed t hat this version elicits a better performance than the standard versio n of the problem. Experiments 2 and 3 confirmed these results, by ruli ng out a possible alternative account of the facilitatory effect obtai ned in Experiment 1. The present results are discussed in relationship to the general issues of content effects and non-consequentialism in reasoning.