Instructional effects on responses in Wason's selection task

This study examines the effects of three different violation instructions in the abstract selection task. Margolis (1987) hypothesized different selection patterns for each of these instructions. The results of Expt 1 supported all of his predictions, including one for a large number of not‐ p and not‐ q selections, an extremely infrequent choice for the abstract selection task. In Expt 2, the violation instruction leading to the not‐ p and not‐ q selections was used in an abstract permission schema selection task problem. In this case, it enhanced the facilitation normally observed for such problems instead of leading to not‐ p and not‐ q selections. The present results are discussed as support for attentional cueing models of reasoning, specifically Margolis's scenario/linguistic ambiguity theory and Evans's heuristic/analytic processing theory.