Comparing measures of individual differences in performance of Conditional Reasoning

Abstract

This study examined the following issues: 1) The relation among different measures in psychometric ability tests (verbal comprehension and reasoning), computerized measure of comprehension skills and the subjects' performance in experimental task of conditional reasoning, 2) whether or not good and poor comprehenders sistematically differ in their performance in Wason's selection task and 3) the differential influence of rule content and instruction on the subjects's performance in the selection task. 154 undergraduate students each completed three psychometric ability tests and a computerized spanish version of Gernsbacher´s Comprehension Battery. The problems just in this study were previously administered by Valiña & cols (1996). The results showed that: a) Performance in Wason´s selection task with abstract and thematic-permission content in terms of logical index is related to measures of the DAT-VR, b) In terms of differential analyses it was found that the logical index was considerably better in the higher reasoning-verbal group (DAT-VR) with abstract content and thematic-permission, but differences were not found in performance among good and poor verbal comprehenders (PMA-V & Gernsbacher´s Comprehension Battery) or subjects with high and low scores in the PMA-R, and c) for the logical index and the matching index, the principal effects of the content of the rule and the instructions were registered.