ABSTRACT
Wason (1966) first reported his selection experiments in a section of an article dealing with inductive reasoning and concept formation, in the Piagetian tradition. The book in which this article appeared (Foss, 1966) gives a rather popular survey of the new developments in psychology at that time. Wason wished to illustrate a cognitive limitation, the “verification bias”, which is analogous to “confirmation bias”. The standard of reasoning was proposition logic, and the particular question was whether or not testers spontaneously applied the modus tollens reasoning pattern, which makes use of falsification.
