Farris H H, Revlin R
Mem Cognit. 1989 Mar;17(2):221-32. doi: 10.3758/bf03197071.
The hypothesis testing skills of undergraduates were measured in two tasks: the 2-4-6 rule discovery task in which students generate and assess hypotheses, and a hypothesis evaluation task, which requires only the assessment of hypotheses. The results of Experiments 1 and 2 show that the students consistently employed a disconfirmation strategy when assessing hypotheses, but employed a counterfactual inference strategy when they also were required to generate the hypotheses. The results of Experiment 3 suggest that the selection of the hypothesis testing strategy reflected a balance between the logical requirements of the task and the desirability of possible outcomes. Taken together, the findings support a more consistent picture of human rationality across tasks, and suggest alternatives to accounts of confirmation bias.
一是2-4-6规则发现任务，学生在该任务中生成并评估假设；二是假设评估任务，该任务仅要求对假设进行评估。实验1和实验2的结果表明，学生在评估假设时始终采用证伪策略，但在需要生成假设时则采用反事实推理策略。实验3的结果表明，假设检验策略的选择反映了任务的逻辑要求与可能结果的可取性之间的平衡。综合来看，这些发现支持了跨任务中人类理性更一致的图景，并为证实性偏差的解释提供了替代方案。
