IMPROVING PERFORMANCE AND INCREASING THE USE OF NONPOSITIVE TESTING IN A RULE-DISCOVERY TASK

A well-documented characteristic of rule discovery behaviour is subjec ts' infrequent use of negative testing. Previous attempts at increasin g the use of negative testing have met with little success. In an eval uation task, we found that subjects appreciate the benefits of negativ e testing and disconfirmation (Kareev & Halberstadt, this issue). Furt her, when given the choice, subjects prefer to begin their inquiry by employing a reception mode of inquiry, and only later switch to a gene rative strategy (Halberstadt & Kareev, 1992). In the present study we had subjects solve two rule-discovery problems. For the training probl em, 180 subjects were assigned either to the traditional generation mo de, in which subjects had to generate number triplets, or to a recepti on mode, in which subjects were presented with number triplets by the experimenter. For the subsequent test problem both groups used the tra ditional generation mode. Results revealed that subjects trained by th e reception mode were more likely to use non-positive tests and more l ikely to solve the second problem. Apparently, training under the less demanding reception mode enabled subjects to realize the potential re levance of non-positive testing.