Lambolez, Sophie

2015-8-28, Lambolez, Sophie, Boissonnade, Romain

Most research undertaken with the selection task have shown that individual resolutions generally fail to reach standard logic expectancies (Wason, 1966, 1968). Several cognitive constraints have been stressed at an individual level of analysis. Nevertheless, Moshman and Geil (1998) suggest that small groups in majority develop correct responses to this task. This collective rationality has been explained diversely. Some research stressed social influences (Oberlé, Drozda-Senkowska, & Quémy, 2002; Olry-Louis, 2009; Olry-Louis & Tamburini, 2011). A few studies provide a sociocognitive analysis (e.g. Quiamzade, 2007). In this second perspective, interlocutory processes have been described in dyadic resolutions of the selection task (Laux, Trognon, & Batt, 2008; Trognon, 1993; Trognon, Batt, & Laux, 2011; Trognon & Retornaz, 1990). Altogether, these studies define social foundations of reasoning. The aim of the present study is to support cooperative interactions in order to see how people can develop reasoning, and potentially in a coherent way with logical standards. We thus asked adult dyads to solve an « enriched » version of the classical selection task (inspired from Manktelow, Sutherland, & Over, 1995) in which the cards were multiplied and some of them were repeated. Using interaction analyses, we try to show that this change into the task has social and cognitive consequences on reasoning. For instance, it can foster co-elaboration or confrontation dynamics. More originally, new problems arise in the resolution, which were invisible with the classical selection task: people discussing about specific cards in an ensemble of multiple identical ones, negotiation of possible or impossible exceptions to the rule, decision-making processes on identical cards, mobilisation of predicative reasoning… These results enable one to consider that the structure of the task strongly participates to social interactions and reasoning, and to researchers’ conclusions about human cognition.