CHILD DEVELOPMENT PEDAGOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -The phenomenon was first described as confirmation bias by Peter Wason in 1960. In what’s known as Wason’s Rule Discovery Test, he conducted an experiment in which participants were asked to find a rule that applied to a series of three numbers. They were told the numbers ‘2-4-6’ satisfied this rule.

Detailed explanation-2: -Confirmation bias (Wason, 1960) occurs when people seek out or evaluate information in a way that fits with their existing thinking and preconceptions.

Detailed explanation-3: -The rule was “If the card shows an even number on one face, then its opposite face is red.” Only a card with both an even number on one face and something other than red on the other face can invalidate this rule: If the 3 card is red (or brown), that doesn’t violate the rule.

Detailed explanation-4: -Wason and the 2-4-6 Task The “2-4-6” task was the first experiment that showed people to be illogical and irrational. In this study, subjects were told that the experimenter had a rule in mind that only applied to sets of threes. The “2-4-6” rule the experimenter had in mind was “any ascending sequence”.

Detailed explanation-5: -The Wason selection test therefore evaluates subjects’ ability to find facts that violate a hypothesis, specifically a conditional hypothesis of the form If P then Q.