On people’s understanding of the diagnostic implications of probabilistic data
Open Access
- 1 September 1996
- journal article
- Published by Springer Science and Business Media LLC in Memory & Cognition
- Vol. 24 (5), 644-654
- https://doi.org/10.3758/bf03201089
Abstract
Two lines of prior research into the conditions under which people seek information are examined in light of two statistical definitions of diagnosticity. Five experiments are reported. In two, subjects selected information in order to test a hypothesis. In the remaining three, they selected information in order to convince someone else of the truth of a known hypothesis. A total of 567 university students served as subjects. The two primary conclusions were as follows: (1) When the task is highly structured by the environment, subjects select information diagnostically, and (2) when the task is less structured, so that subjects must seek relevant information not manifest, they select information pseudodiagnostically. Possible relations to other laboratory inference tasks and to clinical judgment are discussed.Keywords
This publication has 42 references indexed in Scilit:
- Activation, attention, and short-term memoryMemory & Cognition, 1993
- Diagnosticity, confidence, and the need for informationJournal of Behavioral Decision Making, 1992
- Diagnostic and confirmation strategies in trait hypothesis testing.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1990
- Hypothesis testing in rule discovery: Strategy, structure, and content.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 1989
- The quest for limits on noncomplementarity in opinion revisionOrganizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 1989
- Disconfirmation and Dual Hypotheses on a more Difficult version of Wason's 2–4–6 TaskThe Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A, 1987
- Diagnosticity and pseudodiagnosticity.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1983
- Rationality and the psychology of inferenceSynthese, 1983
- Confirmatory and diagnosing strategies in social information gathering.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1982
- ‘Pseudodiagnosticity’ in an idealized medical problem-solving environmentAcademic Medicine, 1982