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Cognitive Science - Project Presentation

This project presentation discusses domain-specific reasoning in cognitive science, focusing on social contracts and cheating. The aim is to replicate the findings of Cosmides and Gigerenzer/Hug and explore the effect of content on reasoning. The study includes 41 IIT students as subjects and uses selection tasks to test different rules and contexts. The results show a replication of some findings but also reveal some discrepancies, potentially due to the subjects' similar background.

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Cognitive Science - Project Presentation

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  1. Cognitive Science - Project Presentation Domain-Specific Reasoning: Social Contracts and Cheating - Jayant Sharma

  2. Wason Selection Task: Content affects reasoning • Cosmides' Research: Social Contracts, a set of cheating detection algorithms still with us • Gigerenzer/Hug: Disentangle the concept of social contracts and cheating • Aim: To replicate the results of Cosmides and Gigerenzer/Hug

  3. Methodology • Subjects: • 41 subjects, all IIT students • 31 boys, 10 girls; age range: 18 – 21 years • Procedure: • 6 selection tasks: each consisting of a rule, an instruction, and a context story • 2 versions of each rule • 2 series of the 6 tasks containing only one version of each rule • Order of rules and cards randomly ordered • Subjects instructed to do problems in order, without going back to a previous one or changing a previous answer; no time limit

  4. Overview. Context Story/Version No. Rule Series 1 Series 2 Theoretical Goal 1 Cassava Cheating(SC) No Cheating(No SC) Replication of Cosmides' 2 Duiker No Cheating(No SC)Cheating(SC) (1989, Exp 1)_____ 3 Trek Cheating(SC) No Cheating(SC) Replicating Gigerenzer's 4 Admission No Cheating(SC) Cheating(SC) findings on cheating 5 Treat No Cheating(SC) Cheating(SC) detection 6 Bollywood Cheating(SC) No Cheating(SC)

  5. EXAMPLE Task 2: Duiker > Rule: If you eat duiker meat, then you have found an ostrich eggshell. > Context Story(SC, Ch): You are an anthropologist studying a mountain tribe. Among them, duiker meat is desirable and scarce, and to earn the privilege of eating it a boy must have found an ostrich eggshell, which is a difficult task representing a boy’s transition to manhood. You are interested in whether boys ever violate this law. Each of the four cards below contain information about a boy. One side tells if they've caught an ostrich egg or not, and the other, if they've had duiker meat or not. > Instruction: Indicate only the card(s) you definitely need to turn over to see if any of these boys violate the rule. > Context Story(No SC, No Ch): > Cued as an anthropologist again > Rule seems to exist because, duikers are small antelopes which feed on ostrich eggs > No reference to any social contract

  6. EXAMPLE Task 4: Admission > Rule: If the parents of a candidate donate a handsome amount to the college, then the college will grant him/her admission. > Context Story(Cheating, SC): You are a candidate seeking admission in one of the many engineering colleges that have sprung up under the aegis of PTU, Punjab. There is an unofficial rule that only if you donate a handsome amount to the college, can you get admission there. However there is a rumour, that the college you're applying to sometimes cheats people by accepting the donation, and still not granting admission. Each of the four card(s) below represents such a scenario; one side telling whether there was a donation or not and the other tells whether admission was granted or not. > Instruction: Indicate the card(s) you definitely need to turn over to determine if the rule was violated. > Context Story(No Cheating, SC): > Cued as a curious journalist with an unbiased viewpoint > Context explains the rule similarly, as a social contract

  7. Results: Replication of Cosmides'(1989, Exp1) PredictionsResults(in %) Average(Cosm- ides' avg) SC TheoryAvailability Cassava Duiker_ _________ P & not-Q responses Cheating(SC) High Low 57.14 80.00 68.57(75) No Cheating Low Low 50 47.62 48.81(21) (No SC)

  8. Results not very clear • Replicated Cosmides' findings(same tasks as taken by her), but not as forcefully • In the second part, particularly because of the anomaly, weak support for the Cheating- detection algorithm; Gigerenzer/Hug reported a a performance difference of 40-50% in each of the tasks they tested • Only one of the tasks similar to one taken by Gigerenzer; rest different, original

  9. Likely reason for low difference in performance on the two versions: • Subjects were all from a similar background: engineering/science • Expected good logical insight, as reflected in high performance on No SC and No Cheating tasks relative to the original experiments • Ideally the pool of subjects should consist of students/people from varying backgrounds

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