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ERIC Number: EJ1055900
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2013-May
Pages: 19
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0278-7393
EISSN: N/A
Naïve Point Estimation
Lindskog, Marcus; Winman, Anders; Juslin, Peter
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, v39 n3 p782-800 May 2013
The capacity of short-term memory is a key constraint when people make online judgments requiring them to rely on samples retrieved from memory (e.g., Dougherty & Hunter, 2003). In this article, the authors compare 2 accounts of how people use knowledge of statistical distributions to make point estimates: either by retrieving precomputed large-sample representations or by retrieving small samples of similar observations post hoc at the time of judgment, as constrained by short-term memory capacity (the naïve sampling model: Juslin, Winman, & Hansson, 2007). Results from four experiments support the predictions by the naïve sampling model, including that participants sometimes guess values that they, when probed, demonstrably know have the lowest probability of occurring. Experiment 1 also demonstrated the operations of an unpredicted recognition-based inference. Computational modeling also incorporating this process demonstrated that the data from all 4 experiments were better predicted by assuming a post hoc sampling process constrained by short-term memory capacity than by assuming abstraction of large-sample representations of the distribution.
American Psychological Association. Journals Department, 750 First Street NE, Washington, DC 20002. Tel: 800-374-2721; Tel: 202-336-5510; Fax: 202-336-5502; e-mail: order@apa.org; Web site: http://www.apa.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Sweden
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A