Talk:THOG problem

not well THOuGht out...?
I have read this article about half a dozen times, and it makes no sense whatsoever.

Firstly, I find the starting conditions self-contradictory. It is asserted that the black circle is a THOG, a THOG having exactly one of the stated properties. The black circle has two of the specified properties...it is a circle an it is black, therefore it is not a THOG. Furthermore, none of the shapes are THOGs because they all have exactly two properties. The only way I can make any sense of this is by boiling the question down to "which of the other shapes shares exactly one property with the black circle?" In this case, it works, the black square and the white circle share exactly one property, and the white square is the odd-one-out. This seems like a fairly trivial logic puzzle to me.

As far as I can tell, there are three possibilities here:

1) The article is badly worded. 2) The article and the THOG problem in general are designed to covertly elicit some other response from the subject, which is the REAL focus of the test. 3) I'm being remarkably stupid, and I just don't "get it".

I'm perfectly prepared to admit that 3) is what's going on. In fact, I'd be delighted if someone would shoot me down in flames and explain the puzzle in simple step-by-step terms. 82.3.144.140 (talk) 17:59, 22 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I had the same problem, so I read the original paper! The wording in the paper is much clearer, so I've had a go at improving the description - hope it's better now. 2.25.153.185 (talk) 23:34, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Other research on THOG
It looks like there's a ton of research that was done on this problem from 1978-2004. Here is a non-exhaustive list (taken from the website of the original article).

Setitup (talk) 14:26, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Newstead, S.E.; Griggs, R.A.; Warner, S.A. 1982: The effects of realism on wasons thog problem Psychological Research 44(1): 85-96
 * Griggs, R.A.; Koenig, C.S.; Alea, N.L. 2001: De-confusing the THOG problem: the Pythagorean solution Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. A Human Experimental Psychology 54(3): 921-933
 * Griggs, R.A.; Newstead, S.E. 1983: The source of intuitive errors in wasons thog problem British Journal of Psychology 74(4): 451-460
 * Stephen, E. Newstead; Richard, A. Griggs 1992: Thinking about THOG: Sources of error in a deductive reasoning problem Psychological Research 54(4): 299-305
 * Koenig, C.S.; Griggs, R.A. 2001: Elementary, my dear Wason: the role of problem representation in the THOG task Psychological Research 65(4): 289-293
 * Girotto, V.; Legrenzi, P. 1989: Mental representation and hypothetico-deductive reasoning: the case of the THOG problem Psychological Research 51(3): 129-135
 * Koenig, C.S.; Griggs, R.A. 2004: Analogical transfer in the THOG task Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. A Human Experimental Psychology 57(3): 557-570
 * Koenig, C; Griggs, R 2004: Facilitation and analogical transfer in the THOG task Thinking and Reasoning 10(4): 355-370
 * Girotto, V. 1993: Naming the parents of the THOG Mental representation and reasoning Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A Human Experimental Psychology 46(4): 701-713
 * O'brien D.P.; Noveck, I.A.; Davidson, G.M.; Fisch, S.M.; Lea, R.B.; Freitag, J. 1990: Sources of difficulty in deductive reasoning the thog task Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A Human Experimental Psychology 42(2): 329-352
 * Smyth, M.M.; Clark, S.E. 1986: My half-sister is a THOG: strategic processes in a reasoning task British Journal of Psychology 77(2): 275-287
 * William, P. Needham; Carlos, A. Amado 1995: Facilitation and transfer with narrative thematic versions of the THOG task Psychological Research 58(1): 67-73
 * Smyth, M.M.; Clark, S.E. 1986: My half sister is a thog strategic processes in a reasoning task British Journal of Psychology 77(2): 275-288
 * Pfeiffer, T.; Czech, T. 2001: Working memory limitation as a source of confusion in the abstract THOG task Psychological Research 65(4): 279-288