Metacognition Analysis On THOG Problem Solving

The THOG problem is a paradigm to study the exclusive disjunction. Wason (1977) firstly devise the THOG problem, and then lots of psychologists became interested in this problem. Some studies revealed that most experimental participants (>80%) fail to solve the problem, though they have the reasoning ability which can solve the THOG problem. At the present time, the exclusive disjunction is still in a neglect situation, and there are only a few studies in China. The research of metacognition analysis on THOG problem solving can not only increase the knowledge about deductive reasoning, but also help the student to improve their reasoning ability. Therefore, our thesis will discuss the metacognition analysis on THOG problem solving in depth.This article designed three experiments to study about the metacognition analysis on THOG problem solving, and there are 336 experimental participants of undergraduate student. In experiment 1, we used a 2×2 experiment to discuss that if the metacognition analysis would appear, during the experimental participants are solving THOG problem. But our result is different with the second research hypothesis, so some further researches are necessary. In experiment 2, we devised a 2×2×2 experiment based on the first experiment, in order to prove up the reason for the mistake in the first experiment. In experiment 3, after clarified the real causes for the mistake in the first experiment, we redesigned the target problem and made an experiment to prove up the metacognition analysis on THOG problem solving.The main conclusions are as follows:1. Using analogical transfer to research the metacognition analysis on problem solving is a more scientific and more effective method, because it can reveal the real reason for metacognition analysis, that the experimental participant really understand the solve principles for the problem.2. For the standard THOG problem, there would never appear metacognition analysis if we only required the experimental participants to state their reasons, because the cognitive processing is so complicated. Only if the question contained the OTHER instruction and required the experimental participants to state their reasons at the same time, then there would appear metacognition analysis. 3. The SARS problem did not lead to the abstraction of the underlying solution principle of the THOG problem. Participants give the right answer to the SARS problem but for the wrong reason (attentional cues), and they transfer this solution to the target problems even the solution is wrong.4. If we want to use analogical transfer paradigm to explain facilitation on THOG problem, we must ensure that there are entities matches, relational matches of entities and FORs, and the HOR matches between the source and target problems.