Working Memory Capacity and a Notorious Brain Teaser
The Case of the Monty Hall Dilemma
Abstract
Abstract. The Monty Hall Dilemma (MHD) is an intriguing example of the discrepancy between people’s intuitions and normative reasoning. This study examines whether the notorious difficulty of the MHD is associated with limitations in working memory resources. Experiment 1 and 2 examined the link between MHD reasoning and working memory capacity. Experiment 3 tested the role of working memory experimentally by burdening the executive resources with a secondary task. Results showed that participants who solved the MHD correctly had a significantly higher working memory capacity than erroneous responders. Correct responding also decreased under secondary task load. Findings indicate that working memory capacity plays a key role in overcoming salient intuitions and selecting the correct switching response during MHD reasoning.
References
(1974). Working memory. In G. Bower (Ed.), Recent advances in learning and motivation (Vol. 8, pp. 47-90). New York: Academic Press.
(1988). Mental rotation: Effects of stimulus complexity and familiarity. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 14, 12– 23
(2004). The collider principle in causal reasoning: Why the monty hall dilemma is so hard. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 133, 434– 449
(2002). A Dutch, computerized, and group administrable adaptation of the operation span test. Psychologica Belgica, 42, 177– 190
(1999). Working memory, short-term memory, and general fluid intelligence: A latent-variable approach. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 128, 309– 331
(1994). Integration of the cognitive and psychodynamic unconscious. American Psychologist, 49, 709– 724
(2003). In two minds: Dual-process accounts of reasoning. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7, 454– 459
(1996). Rationality and reasoning. Hove, UK: Psychology Press.
(1992). A closer look at the probabilities of the notorious three prisoners. Cognition, 77, 197– 213
(1998). Monty Hall’s three doors: Construction and deconstruction of a choice anomaly. American Economic Review, 88, 933– 946
(1997). Educators’ warnings about changing examination answers: Effects on students perceptions and performance. College Student Journal, 31, 429– 432
(1995). Commission, omission, and dissonance reduction: Coping with regret in the ”Monty Hall” problem. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21, 185– 190
(1995). The Monty Hall dilemma. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21, 182– 190
(1981). Rated ease of memorization of dot-in-matrix patterns: Multiple regression analysis by physical variables which describe configuration of dots. Japanese Psychological Research, 25, 173– 180
(1999). Naô¤ve probability: A mental model theory of extensional reasoning. Psychological Review, 106, 62– 88
(1982). Judgement under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
(2000). Is rationality really ”bounded” by information processing constraints?. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 23, 683– 684
(2003). The psychology of the Monty Hall Problem: Discovering psychological mechanisms for solving a tenacious brain teaser. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 132, 3– 22
(1990). Simple and complex word spans as measures of working memory capacity. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 16, 1118– 1133
(2001). How are visuospatial working memory, executive functioning, and spatial abilities related? A latent-variable analysis. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 130, 621– 640
(2003). Individual differences transcend the rationality debate. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 26, 530– 531
(1994). Inevitable illusions: How mistakes of reason rule our minds. New York: Wiley.
(1991). Essentials of behavioral research: Methods and data analysis. (2nd Ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
(1998). My brain is open: The mathematical journeys of Paul Erdõs. New York: Simon & Schuster.
(1989). Intuitive reasoning about probability: Theoretical and experimental analysis of the ”problem of three prisoners”. Cognition, 32, 1– 24
(1996). The empirical case for two systems of reasoning. Psychological Bulletin, 119, 3– 22
(1999). Who is rational?. Studies of individual differences in reasoning. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
(1998a). Individual differences in framing and conjunction effects. Thinking and Reasoning, 4, 289– 317
(1998b). Cognitive ability and variation in selection task performance. Thinking and Reasoning, 4, 193– 230
(2000). Individual differences in reasoning: Implications for the rationality debate. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 23, 645– 726
(2000). The ability is not general, and neither are the conclusions. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 23, 697– 698
(2002). Working-memory capacity explains reasoning ability and a little bit more. Intelligence, 30, 261– 288
(1991, July 21). Behind Monty Hall’s doors: Puzzle, debate and answer?. New York Times, pp. 1, 20.
(1993). Working memory and conditional reasoning. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 46A, 679– 699
(2003). Overcoming illusory inferences in a probabilistic counterintuitive problem: The role of explicit representations. Memory & Cognition, 31, 596– 607
(1983). Extensional versus intuitive reasoning: The conjunction fallacy in probability judgment. Psychological Review, 90, 293– 315
(2004). Everyday conditional reasoning with working memory preload. Proceedings of the Twenty-Sixth Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Mahwah: Erlbaum.
(1997). The power of logical thinking. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
(1966). Reasoning. In B. M. Foss (Ed.), New Horizons in Psychology: I (pp. 106-137). Harmandsworth, UK: Penguin.
