Abstract

Prior research has suggested that perceptual disfluency activates analytical processing and increases the solution rate of mathematical problems with appealing but incorrect answers (i.e., the Cognitive Reflection Test, hereafter CRT). However, a recent meta-analysis does not support such a conclusion. We tested here whether insufficient numerical ability can account for this discrepancy. We found strong evidence against the disfluency effect on the problem-solving rate for the Numerical CRT problems regardless of participants’ numeracy and for the Verbal CRT non-math problems (n = 310, Exp. 1) even though simple instructions to pay attention to and reflect upon the Verbal CRT problems substantially increased their solution rate (n = 311, Exp. 2). The updated meta-analysis (k = 18) yielded close-to-zero effect, Hedge’s g = −0.01, 95% CI[-0.05, 0.03] and decisive evidence against the disfluency effect on math problems, BF₀₊ = 151.6. Thus, perceptual disfluency does not activate analytical processing.

摘要

先前的研究表明，感知上的流离失所激活了分析处理并提高了数学问题的解决率，这些数学问题具有吸引人但不正确的答案（即认知反射测试，以下简称CRT）。但是，最近的荟萃分析不支持这种结论。我们在这里测试了数字能力不足是否可以解决此差异。我们发现有力的证据表明，无论参加者的计算能力如何，数字CRT问题和口头CRT非数学问题（n  = 310，实验1）对数字CRT问题的解题率都存在流散性影响，即使要注意的简单说明也是如此。反思口头CRT问题，大大提高了他们的解决率（n  = 311，实验2）。更新的荟萃分析（k  = 18）产生了接近于零的效应，Hedge的g = -0.01，95％CI [-0.05，0.03]，并且有针对性的证据证明了对数学问题的分散性效应，BF ₀₊ = 151.6。因此，感知上的不满不会激活分析过程。