Toward a Cultural-Historical Perspective on the Selection Task

Independently of their age, individuals produce weak logical responses when they solve the Wason selection task. Many studies describe conditional reasoning, focusing on intra-individual and general processes. The role of meaning attributed to the situation or the linguistic interpretation of the rules have nevertheless been stressed by pragmatic studies. Few scattered studies show the role of collective situations, of subjects’ prior knowledge and of objects in solving the selection task. This paper goes back to the questions raised by the selection task and attempts to place past results into a cultural-historical theoretical framework, which defines a complex and evolving cognitive system, where human beings rely on social exchanges, equip themselves with cultural instruments, create intellectual tools, and give meaning to their experiences. Taking into account such a system is necessary to shed light upon the possibilities for the development of human thinking processes in order to solve selection tasks.