Dimensions of Judgment: Factor Analysis of Individual Differences (original) (raw)
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Journal of experimental psychology. General, 2014
Making accurate judgments is an essential skill in everyday life. Although how different memory abilities relate to categorization and judgment processes has been hotly debated, the question is far from resolved. We contribute to the solution by investigating how individual differences in memory abilities affect judgment performance in 2 tasks that induced rule-based or exemplar-based judgment strategies. In a study with 279 participants, we investigated how working memory and episodic memory affect judgment accuracy and strategy use. As predicted, participants switched strategies between tasks. Furthermore, structural equation modeling showed that the ability to solve rule-based tasks was predicted by working memory, whereas episodic memory predicted judgment accuracy in the exemplar-based task. Last, the probability of choosing an exemplar-based strategy was related to better episodic memory, but strategy selection was unrelated to working memory capacity. In sum, our results sugg...
Algorithm, heuristic or exemplar: Process and representation in multiple-cue judgment
2000
We present an experimental design that allows us to investigate the representations and processes used in human multiple-cue judgment. We compare three ideal models of how knowledge is stored and applied in a judgment: A linear additive model (LAM), a heuristic model, Take-the-best (TTB) and a generic exemplar-based model (EBM). The results show that people adaptively change processing depending on what information is present in the learning phase and whether or not the learning situation is compatible with the test. Feedback on a continuous variable provides information sufficient to estimate a LAM that can be used both when learning is and is not compatible with the test. When only dichotomous feedback is provided, the processes differ depending on the learning-test compatibility. At high compatibility, the processing is best described by EBM, but at low compatibility heuristic processes such as TTB become more frequent alternatives to LAM.
UNDERSTANDING COMPLEX JUDGMENT PROCESSES: MULTIPLE CUE JUDGMENT TASKS WITH THREE CUES
opim.wharton.upenn.edu
Despite the interest in multi-attribute decision-making, the research on how people combine information that is present in the environment to form judgments has been limited (for exceptions see . Most of the research on combining attributes looks at heuristics such as Take-The-Best heuristic and the Priority Heuristic (Brandstaetter et al., 2006). These heuristics models are usually compared to the basic weighted additive model (WADD), while the work in categorization literature on cue integration by using exemplar models as well as multiplicative and mixed additive/multiplicative models has been largely ignored.
Frontiers in psychology, 2016
In this paper, we investigate whether individual differences in performance on heuristic and biases tasks can be explained by cognitive abilities, monitoring confidence, and control thresholds. Current theories explain individual differences in these tasks by the ability to detect errors and override automatic but biased judgments, and deliberative cognitive abilities that help to construct the correct response. Here we retain cognitive abilities but disentangle error detection, proposing that lower monitoring confidence and higher control thresholds promote error checking. Participants (N = 250) completed tasks assessing their fluid reasoning abilities, stable monitoring confidence levels, and the control threshold they impose on their decisions. They also completed seven typical heuristic and biases tasks such as the cognitive reflection test and Resistance to Framing. Using structural equation modeling, we found that individuals with higher reasoning abilities, lower monitoring c...
Journal of experimental child psychology, 2008
We examined the relationship between cognitive capacity and heuristic responding on four types of reasoning and decision-making tasks. A total of 84 children, between 5 years 2 months and 11 years 7 months of age, participated in the study. There was a marked increase in heuristic responding with age that was related to increases in cognitive capacity. These findings are inconsistent with the predominant dual-process accounts of reasoning and decision making as applied to development. We offer an alternative explanation of the findings, considering them in the context of recent claims concerning the role of working memory in contextualized reasoning.
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2012
Multiple cue probability learning (MCPL) involves learning to predict a criterion based on a set of novel cues when feedback is provided in response to each judgment made. But to what extent does MCPL require controlled attention and explicit hypothesis testing? The results of two experiments show that this depends on cue polarity. Learning about cues that predict positively is aided by automatic cognitive processes, whereas learning about cues that predict negatively is especially demanding on controlled attention and hypothesis testing processes. In the studies reported here, negative, but not positive cue learning related to individual differences in working memory capacity both on measures of overall judgment performance and modelling of the implicit learning process. However, the introduction of a novel method to monitor participants' explicit beliefs about a set of cues on a trial-by-trial basis revealed that participants were engaged in explicit hypothesis testing about positive and negative cues, and explicit beliefs about both types of cues were linked to working memory capacity. Taken together, our results indicate that while people are engaged in explicit hypothesis testing during cue learning, explicit beliefs are applied to judgment only when cues are negative.
How generalizable is good judgment? A multi-task, multi-benchmark study
Judgment and Decision Making
Good judgment is often gauged against two gold standards – coherence and correspondence. Judgments are coherent if they demonstrate consistency with the axioms of probability theory or propositional logic. Judgments are correspondent if they agree with ground truth. When gold standards are unavailable, silver standards such as consistency and discrimination can be used to evaluate judgment quality. Individuals are consistent if they assign similar judgments to comparable stimuli, and they discriminate if they assign different judgments to dissimilar stimuli. We ask whether “superforecasters”, individuals with noteworthy correspondence skills (see Mellers et al., 2014) show superior performance on laboratory tasks assessing other standards of good judgment. Results showed that superforecasters either tied or out-performed less correspondent forecasters and undergraduates with no forecasting experience on tests of consistency, discrimination, and coherence. While multifaceted, good ju...
Explicit and implicit processes in multicue judgment
Memory & Cognition, 2003
In two experiments, a multicue probability learning task was used to train participants in relating judgments to a criterion, on the basis of several cues that could or could not be relevant. The outcome feedback had 25% added noise to simulate real-world experience-based learning. Judgmental strategies acquired were measured by individual multiple linear regression analyses of a test phase (with no feedback) and were compared with self-ratings of cue relevance. In a third experiment, participants were instructed explicitly on cue relevance, with no training phase. The pattern of results suggested that both implicit and explicit cognitive processes influenced judgments and that they may have been sensitive to different task manipulations in the learning phase. On more complex tasks, despite weak explicit learning, explicit processes continued to influence judgments, producing a decrement in performance. These findings explain why studies of expert judgment often show only moderate levels of self-insight, since people have only partial access to the processes determining their judgments.
Heuristic and linear models of judgment: Matching rules and environments
Psychological Review, 2007
Much research has highlighted incoherent implications of judgmental heuristics, yet other findings have demonstrated high correspondence between predictions and outcomes. At the same time, judgment has been well modeled in the form of as if linear models. Accepting the probabilistic nature of the environment, the authors use statistical tools to model how the performance of heuristic rules varies as a function of environmental characteristics. They further characterize the human use of linear models by exploring effects of different levels of cognitive ability. They illustrate with both theoretical analyses and simulations. Results are linked to the empirical literature by a meta-analysis of lens model studies. Using the same tasks, the authors estimate the performance of both heuristics and humans where the latter are assumed to use linear models. Their results emphasize that judgmental accuracy depends on matching characteristics of rules and environments and highlight the trade-off between using linear models and heuristics. Whereas the former can be cognitively demanding, the latter are simple to implement. However, heuristics require knowledge to indicate when they should be used.
Personality and Individual Differences, 2001
Fluid intelligence is often measured with ®gural tests, whereas crystallized intelligence is often assessed with verbal tests. It is argued that construct-irrelevant ®gural variance is included in¯uid intelligence and construct-irrelevant verbal variance is included in crystallized intelligence. The speci®cation of a content facet comprising verbal, numerical, and ®gural abilities for¯uid and crystallized intelligence would reduce the construct irrelevant variance. This faceted view of¯uid and crystallized abilities is regarded as more convincing than a purely hierarchical structure. Although the present approach is partly similar to Guttman's Radex model, no radial partitioning of the tasks is expected. Seven hundred and six German participants aged between 14 and 50 years were tested with the I-S-T 2000, a test comprising verbal, numerical, and ®gural reasoning tasks, as well as verbal, numerical, and ®gural knowledge tests. In smallest space analysis, a simplex for¯uid and crystallized intelligence emerged as well as a radial or a polar facet for verbal, numerical, and ®gural content. The faceted structure for¯uid and crystallized intelligence was also shown in con®rmatory factor analysis and ®tted the data more completely than the hierarchical model. The implications for the conceptualization and the assessment of¯uid and crystallized intelligence are discussed. #