Simple predictions fueled by capacity limitations: When are they successful?

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition

Volumn 32, Issue 5, 2006, Pages 966-982

  Gaissmaier, Wolfgang ^a   Schooler, Lael J ^a   Rieskamp, Jörg ^a  

^a MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR HUMAN DEVELOPMENT   (Germany)

Author keywords

ACT R; Correlation detection; Probability learning; Sex differences; Short term memory capacity

Indexed keywords

ADULT; ARTICLE; ATTENTION; COMPARATIVE STUDY; DECISION MAKING; FEMALE; HUMAN; MALE; NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL TEST; PHYSIOLOGY; PROACTIVE INHIBITION; PROBABILITY; PSYCHOLOGICAL MODEL; SHORT TERM MEMORY;

ADULT; ATTENTION; FEMALE; HUMANS; JUDGMENT; MALE; MEMORY, SHORT-TERM; MODELS, PSYCHOLOGICAL; NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL TESTS; PROACTIVE INHIBITION; PROBABILITY;

EID: 33748423859     PISSN: 02787393     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1037/0278-7393.32.5.966     Document Type: Article

References (78)

1. Alloy, L. B., & Tabachnik, N. (1984). Assessment of covariation in humans and animals: The joint influence of prior expectations and current situational information. Psychological Review, 91, 112-149.
2. Anderson, J. R., Bothell, D., Byrne, M. D., Douglass, S., Lobiere, C., & Qin, Y. (2004). An integrated theory of the mind. Psychological Review, 111, 1036-1060.
3. Anderson, J. R., Bothell, D., Lebiere, C., & Matessa, M. (1998). An integrated theory of list memory. Journal of Memory and Language, 38, 341-380.
4. Anderson, J. R., Fincham, J. M., & Douglass. S. (1999). Practice and retention: A unifying analysis. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 25, 1120-1136.
5. Anderson, J. R., & Lebiere, C. (1998). The atomic components of thought. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
6. Anderson, J. R., & Schooler, L. J. (1991). Reflections of the environment in memory. Psychological Science, 2, 396-408.
7. Anderson, R. B., Doherty, M. E., Berg, N. D., & Friedrich, J. C. (2005). Sample size and the detection of correlation: A signal detection account. Psychological Review, 112, 268-279.
8. Ayton, P., & Fischer, I. (2004). The hot-hand fallacy and the gambler's fallacy: Two faces of subjective randomness? Memory &. Cognition, 32, 1369-1378.
9. Bauer, M. (1972). Relations between prediction- and estimation-responses in cue-probability learning and transfer. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 13, 198-207.
10. Bitterman, M. E., Wodinsky, J., & Candland, D. K. (1958). Some comparative psychology. American Journal of Psychology, 71, 94-110.
11. Brunswik. E. (1939). Probability as a determiner of rat behavior. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 25, 175-197.
12. Clément, M., Mercier, P., & Pasto, L. (2002). Sample size, confidence, and contingency judgement. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 56, 128-137.
13. Conway, A. R. A., Kane, M. J., Bunting, M. F., Hambrick, D. Z., Wilhelm, O., & Engle, R. W. (2005). Working memory span tasks: A methodological review and user's guide. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 12, 769-786.
14. De Houwer, J., & Beckers, T. (2002). A review of recent developments in research and theory on human contingency learning research. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 55B, 289-310.
15. Derks, P. L., & Paclisanu, M. I. (1967). Simple strategies in binary predictions by children and adults. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 73, 278-285.
16. Dougherty, M. R. P., & Hunter, J. E. (2003). Hypothesis generation, probability judgment and individual differences in working memory capacity. Acta Psychologica, 113, 263-282.
17. Engle, R. W., Tuholski, S. W., Laughlin, J. E., & Conway, A. R. A. (1999). Working memory, short-term memory, and general fluid intelligence: A latent variable approach. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 128, 309-331.
18. Erev, I. (1998). Signal detection by human observers: A cutoff reinforcement learning model of categorization decisions under uncertainty. Psychological Review, 105, 280-298.
19. Frev, I., & Barron, G. (2005). On adaptation, maximization, and reinforcement learning among cognitive strategies. Psychological Review, 112, 912-932.
20. Estes, W. K. (1976). The cognitive side of probability learning. Psychological Review, 83, 37-64.
21. Estes, W. K., & Straughan, J. H. (1954). Analysis of a verbal conditioning situation in terms of statistical learning theory. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 47, 225-234.
22. Fantino, E., & Esfandiari, A. (2002). Probability matching: Encouraging optimal responding in humans. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 56, 58-63.
23. Gonzalez, C. Lerch, F. J., & Lebiere, C. (2003). Instance-based learning in real-time dynamic decision making. Cognitive Science, 27, 591-635.
24. Goodnow, J. J. (1955). Determinants of choice-distribution in two-choice situations. American Journal of Psychology, 68, 106-116.
25. Herlitz, A., Nilsson, L.-G., & Bäckman, L. (1997). Gender differences in episodic memory. Memory & Cognition, 25, 801-811.
26. Herrnstein, R. J., & Loveland. D. H. (1975). Maximizing and matching on concurrent ratio schedules. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 24, 107-116.
27. Hertwig, R., & Todd, P. M. (2003). More is not always better: The benefits of cognitive limits. In D. Hardman & L. Macchi (Eds.), Thinking: Psychological perspectives on reasoning, judgment and decision making (pp. 213-231). Chichester, UK: Wiley.
28. Hinson, J. M., & Staddon, J. E. R. (1983). Matching, maximizing and hillclimbing. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 40, 321-331.
29. Humphreys, L. G. (1939). Acquisition and extinction of verbal expectations in a situation analogous to conditioning. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 25, 294-301.
30. Irwin, J. R., & McClelland, G. H. (2003). Negative consequences of dichotomizing continuous predictor variables. Journal of Market Research, 40, 366-371.
31. Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1983). Mental models: Towards a cognitive science of language, inference, and consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
32. Juslin, P., & Olsson, H. (2005). Capacity limitations and the detection of correlation: Comment on Kareev (2000). Psychological Review, 112, 256-267.
33. Juslin, P., & Persson, M. (2002). PROBabilities from EXemplars (PROBEX): A "lazy" algorithm for probabilistic inference from generic knowledge. Cognitive Science, 26, 563-607.
34. Kahneman, D., Slovic, P., & Tversky, A. (Eds.). (1982). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
35. Kane, M. J., & Engle, R. W. (2000). Working-memory capacity, proactive interference, and divided attention: Limits on long-term memory retrieval. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 26, 336-358.
36. Kareev, Y. (1995a). Positive bias in the perception of covariation. Psychological Review, 102, 490-502.
37. Kareev, Y. (1995b). Through a narrow window: Working memory capacity and the detection of covariation. Cognition, 56, 263-269.
38. Kareev, Y. (2000). Seven (indeed, plus or minus two) and the detection of correlations. Psychological Review, 107, 397-402.
39. Kareev, Y. (2004). On the perception of consistency. Psychology of Learning and Motivation: Advances in Research and Theory, 44, 261-285.
40. Kareev, Y. (2005). And yet the small-sample effect does hold: Reply to Juslin and Olsson (2005) and Anderson, Doherty, Berg, and Friedrich (2005). Psychological Re view, 112, 280-285.
41. Kareev, Y., Lieberman, I., & Lev, M. (1997). Through a narrow window: Sample size and the perception of correlation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 126, 278-287.
42. Kirkpatrick, S., Gelatt, C. D., Jr., & Vecchi, M. P. (1983). Optimization by simulated annealing. Science, 220, 671-680.
43. Kyllonen, P. C., & Christal, R. E. (1990). Reasoning ability is (little more than) working memory capacity?! Intelligence, 14, 389-433.
44. Lewin, C., Wolgers, G., & Herlitz, A. (2001). Sex differences favoring women in verbal and non-verbal, but not in visuospatial episodic memory. Neuropsychology, 15, 165-173.
45. Logan, G. D. (1988). Toward an instance theory of automatization. Psychological Review, 95, 492-527.
46. Lopes, L. L. (1982). Doing the impossible: A note on induction and the experience of randomness. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 8, 626-636.
47. Lovett, M. C. (1998). Choice. In J. R. Anderson & C. Lebiere (Eds.), The atomic components of thought (pp. 255-296). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
48. Miller, G. (1956). The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychological Review, 63, 81-97.
49. Miyake, A., Friedman, N. P., Rettinger, D. A., Shah, P., & Hegarty, M. (2001). How are visuospatial working memory, executive functioning, and spatial abilities related? A latent-variable analysis. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 130, 621-640.
50. Mutter, S. A., & Williams, T. W. (2004). Aging and the detection of contingency in causal learning. Psychology and Aging, 19, 13-26.
51. Myers, J. L. (1976). Probability learning and sequence learning. In W. K. Estes (Ed.), Handbook of learning and cognitive processes: Approaches to human learning and motivation (pp. 171-205). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
52. Neimark, E. D., & Shuford, E. H. (1959). Comparison of predictions and estimations in a probability learning situation. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 57, 294-298.
53. Nosofsky, R. M. (1986). Attention, similarity, and the identification categorization relationship. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 115, 39-57.
54. Nosofsky, R. M., Kruschke, J. K., & McKinley, S. C. (1992). Combining exemplar-based category representations and connectionist learning rules. Journal of Experimental Psychology: teaming, Memory, and Cognition, 18, 211-233.
55. Nosofsky, R. M., & Palmen, T. J. (1997). An exemplar-based random walk model of speeded classification. Psychological Review, 104, 266-300.
56. Overman, W. H. (2004). Sex differences in early childhood, adolescence and adulthood on cognitive tasks that rely on orbital prefrontal cortex. Brain and Cognition, 55, 134-147.
57. Parr, W., & Mercier, P. (1998). Adult age differences in on-line contingency judgments. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 52, 147-158.
58. Reavis, R., & Overman, W. H. (2001). Adult sex differences on a decision-making task previously shown to depend on the orbital prefrontal cortex. Behavioral Neuroscience, 115, 196-206.
59. Rieskamp, J., Busemeyer, J. R., & Laine, T. (2003). How do people learn to allocate resources? Comparing two learning theories. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 29, 1066-1081.
60. Rieskamp, J., & Otto, P. E. (2006). SSL: A theory of how people learn to select strategies. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 135, 207-236.
61. Sanford, A. J., & Maule, A. J. (1973). The concept of general experience: Age and strategies in guessing future events. Journal of Gerontology, 28, 81-88.
62. Schooler, L. J., & Hertwig, R. (2005). How forgetting aids heuristic inference. Psychological Review, 112, 610-628.
63. Shaklee, H., & Minis, M. (1982). Sources of error in judging event covariations: Effects of memory demands. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 8, 208-224.
64. Shanks, D. R. (1985). Continuous monitoring of human contingency judgment across trials. Memory & Cognition, 13, 158-167.
65. Shanks, D. R. (1987). Acquisition functions in causality judgment. Learning and Motivation, 18, 147-166.
66. Shanks, D. R., Tunney, R. J., & McCarthy, J. D. (2002). A re-examination of probability matching and rational choice. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 15, 233-250.
67. Singer, E. (1967). Ability and the use of optimal strategy in decisions. American Journal of Psychology, 80, 243-249.
68. Stanovich, K. E., & West, R. F. (1998). Individual differences in rational thought. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 127, 161-188.
69. Taatgen, N. A., & Anderson, J. R. (2002). Why do children learn to say "broke"? A model of learning the past tense without feedback. Cognition, 86, 123-155.
70. Taatgen, N. A., Lebiere, C., & Anderson, J. R. (2006). Modeling paradigms in ACT-R. In R. Sun (Ed.), Cognition and multi-agent interaction: From cognitive modeling to social simulation (pp. 29-52). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
71. Vulkan, N. (2000). An economist's perspective on probability matching. Journal of Economic Surveys, 14, 101-118.
72. Weir, M. W. (1964). Developmental changes in problem-solving strategies. Psychological Review, 71, 473-490.
73. West, R. F., & Stanovich, K. B. (2003). Is probability matching smart? Associations between probabilistic choices and cognitive ability. Memory & Cognition, 31, 243-251.
74. Wilson, W. A., Jr., & Rollin, A. R. (1959). Two-choice behavior of rhesus monkeys in a noncontingent situation. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 58, 174-180.
75. Wolford, G., Miller, M. B., & Gazzaniga, M. (2000). The left hemisphere's role in hypothesis formation. Journal of Neuroscience, 20 (RC64), 1-4.
76. Wolford, G., Newman, S., Miller, M. B., & Wig, G. (2004). Searching for patterns in random sequences. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 58, 221-228.
77. Yechiam, E., & Busemeyer, J. R. (2005). Comparison of basic assumptions embedded in learning models for experience based decision-making. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 12, 387-402.
78. Yellott, J. I., Jr. (1969). Probability learning with noncontingent success. Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 6, 541-575.