ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we describe how analogical transfer has been employed in our research on Wason’s THOG problem (Wason, 1977, 1978; Wason & Brooks, 1979) to attain several goals. First, we wanted to determine if the improved performance on the Pythagoras (Needham & Amado, 1995), Blackboard (O’Brien, Noveck, Davidson, Fisch, Lea, & Freitag, 1990) and SARS (Girotto & Legrenzi, 1993) versions of the THOG problem could be replicated and better understood by examining the importance of various elements of these problems to achieving analogical transfer. Second, we wanted to determine if improved performance indicated participants had truly abstracted the solution principle of the standard THOG problem by exploring which components of the solution needed to be abstracted for facilitation and analogical transfer to occur. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we wanted to explain why the THOG problem has been so difficult to solve and how a dual-processing theory of reasoning (Evans, 2003, 2007, 2008) enlightens our understanding of this difficulty. Before describing our research, an overview of the THOG problem, the basic empirical findings for it, and the most common explanations for performance are provided.
