City Research Online

Abstract

Six experiments studied relative frequency judgment and recall of sequentially presented items drawn from two distinct categories (i.e., city and animal). The experiments show that judged frequencies of categories of sequentially encountered stimuli are affected by certain properties of the sequence configuration. We find (a) a first-run effect whereby people overestimated the frequency of a given category when that category was the first repeated category to occur in the sequence and (b) a dissociation between judgments and recall; respondents may judge one event more likely than the other and yet recall more instances of the latter. Specifically, the distribution of recalled items does not correspond to the frequency estimates for the event categories, indicating that participants do not make frequency judgments by sampling their memory for individual items as implied by other accounts such as the availability heuristic (Tversky & Kahneman, 1973) and the availability process model (Hastie & Park, 1986). We interpret these findings as reflecting the operation of a judgment heuristic sensitive to sequential patterns and offer an account for the relationship between memory and judged frequencies of sequentially encountered stimuli.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This article may not exactly replicate the final version published in the APA journal. It is not the copy of record
Publisher Keywords:	temporal-sequence patterns, frequency judgments, categorization, memory
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
Departments:	School of Health & Psychological Sciences > Psychology
Related URLs:	Author
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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