Representation facilitates reasoning: what natural frequencies are and what they are not.

Full Abstract

A good representation can be crucial for finding the solution to a problem. Gigerenzer and Hoffrage (Psychol. Rev. 102 (1995) 684; Psychol. Rev. 106 (1999) 425) have shown that representations in terms of natural frequencies, rather than conditional probabilities, facilitate the computation of a cause's probability (or frequency) given an effect--a problem that is usually referred to as Bayesian reasoning. They also have shown that normalized frequencies--which are not natural frequencies--do not lead to computational facilitation, and consequently, do not enhance people's performance. Here, we correct two misconceptions propagated in recent work (Cognition 77 (2000) 197; Cognition 78 (2001) 247; Psychol. Rev. 106 (1999) 62; Organ. Behav. Hum. Decision Process. 82 (2000) 217):
normalized frequencies have been mistaken for natural frequencies and, as a consequence, "nested sets" and the "subset principle" have been proposed as new explanations. These new terms, however, are nothing more than vague labels for the basic properties of natural frequencies.

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Author information

Author/s: Hoffrage, Ulrich (U); Gigerenzer, Gerd (G); Krauss, Stefan (S); Martignon, Laura (L);

Affiliation: Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Lentzeallee 94, 14195, Berlin, Germany. hoffrage@mpib-berlin.mpg.de

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Comment; Journal Article

Journal: Cognition (Cognition), published in Netherlands. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2002-Jul; vol 84 (issue 3) : pp 343-52

Dates: Created 2002/06/04; Completed 2002/09/17; Revised 2004/11/17;

PMID: 12044739, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

Comments and Corrections

CommentOn: Cognition. 2000 Dec 15;77(3):197-213. (PMID: 11018509)

CommentOn: Cognition. 2001 Mar;78(3):247-76. (PMID: 11124351)

CommentIn: Cognition. 2002 Jul;84(3):353-9. (PMID: 12044740)

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