Do People Order Cues by Retrieval Fluency when Making Probabilistic Inferences?

In multiple‐cue probabilistic inferences, people infer alternatives' unknown values on decision criteria, using alternatives' attributes as cues. Some inferential strategies, like take‐the‐best, assume that people consider relevant cues sequentially in order of decreasing validity. This assumption has been deemed cognitively implausible by some, who suggest memory retrieval principles to guide cue order. We test whether memory‐based inferences are better described by a model considering cues in order of validity or in order of memory retrieval. In an experiment, we manipulated the frequency with which cues appeared in a learning phase, increasing retrieval fluency of cue values related to the more frequently appearing cue. In a subsequent decision phase, participants made a series of two‐alternative decisions based on the learned cue values. We compared two sequential sampling models, which differed in whether cues are sampled in order of subjective cue validity or in order of retrieval fluency. To model retrieval order of cues in the fluency sampling model, we used the declarative memory theory embedded in the ACT‐R cognitive architecture. Most participants' decisions were best described by the model sampling cues in order of memory retrieval. Only a minority of participants were classified as sampling cues by validity. Our result suggests that retrieval fluency is the primary driver of cue order in inferences from memory, irrespective of the cues' validities. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Using baseline to diagnose internal states? Listen closely

Little is known about the mechanisms underlying how interviewers establish and monitor baselines of respondent behaviour. This study addresses this knowledge gap by characterising the practice of establishing baselines and measuring the accuracy of interviewer judgements based on assessments of baseline and departure behaviours. Eighteen professional interviewers viewed two videos of naturalistic interviews, reported the cues they perceived as informative for establishing and assessing a baseline, and diagnosed respondents' internal states. Participants reported multiple cue types as informative, but predominantly relied on non‐verbal cues. Overall, participants were sensitive to 27% of respondents' identified internal states but showed improvement over time. They achieved a hit rate of 20% during early interview stages and a hit rate of 33% during late stages. Although non‐verbal cues dominated reports, attending to verbal cues afforded participants greater efficiency in identifying respondent internal states. Implications and recommendations for practice are discussed.     

Expectancy‐effects without expectancies: Illusory correlations based on cue‐overlap

Expectancy‐based illusory correlations have been observed in numerous experiments. Simulations using the connectionist computer model BIAS (Fiedler, 1996 ) show that such illusory correlations may not always reflect expectancy biases but influences of similarity via cue‐overlap. Cue‐overlap means that some of the probabilistic cues that indicate the presence of one variable are also indicative of another variable. In an experiment, participants learned two novel concepts pertaining to a fictitious painter and a fictitious artistic style in separate runs. Both concepts were defined by multiple probabilistic cues observable in paintings. For half the participants, the cue systems underlying the perception of the two concepts overlapped, whereas for the other half they did not. In addition, we manipulated whether or not participants expected a positive contingency between artist and artistic style. In the second part of the experiment, a series of paintings was presented that constituted an objective zero correlation between artist and artistic style. Participants' subsequent contingency judgments were assessed by direct and indirect measures. Data analyses revealed main effects for expectancy induction and cue‐overlap but no interaction on the direct measure and nearly identical results on the indirect measure. Thus, cue‐overlap and expectancy induction independently triggered the development of illusory correlations. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Culture and visual perception: Does perceptual inference depend on culture?1,2

Abstract: Some perceptual cues carry information about the overall pattern of an object (holistic cues), whereas others carry information about the distinct parts of an object (part cues). Drawing on recent work on culture and cognition, the authors predicted that people with European‐American cultural backgrounds would be more capable of using part cues in perceptual inference than those with Asian backgrounds. No such cross‐cultural difference was expected for the ability to use holistic cues. In two studies, participants were presented with either one of the two types of cues and asked to infer the identity of the original objects. As predicted, in the part‐cue condition European‐American participants performed better than did Japanese (Study 1) and Asian‐American participants (Study 2). Also as predicted, there was no cultural difference in the holistic‐cue condition. The results were interpreted with reference to other related studies documenting reliable cross‐cultural differences in cognition.     

The recognition heuristic in memory‐based inference: is recognition a non‐compensatory cue?

The recognition heuristic makes the strong claim that probabilistic inferences in which a recognized object is compared to an unrecognized one are made solely on the basis of whether the objects are recognized or not, ignoring all other available cues. This claim has been seriously challenged by a number of studies that have shown a clear effect of additional cue knowledge. In most of these studies, either recognition knowledge was acquired during the experiment, and/or additional cues were provided to participants. However, the recognition heuristic is more likely to be a tool for exploiting natural (rather than induced) recognition when inferences have to be made from memory. In our study on natural recognition and inferences from memory, around 85% of the inferences followed recognition information even when participants had learned three cues that contradicted recognition and when some of the contradictory cues were deemed more valid than recognition. Nevertheless, there were strong individual differences in the use of recognition. Whereas about half of the participants chose the recognized object regardless of the number of conflicting cues—suggestive of the hypothesized noncompensatory processing of recognition—the remaining participants were influenced by the additional knowledge. The former group of participants also tended to give higher estimates of recognition's validity. In addition, we found that the use of recognition for an inference may be affected by whether additional cue knowledge has been learned outside or within the experimental setting. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Integrating Fast and Frugal Heuristics with a Model of Memory‐based Cue Generation

Although the fast and frugal heuristics have been studied extensively, relatively little attention has been paid to how cues are generated to be used within the heuristics. The goal of this paper is to propose and test a memory‐based model of how cues are generated and used in cue‐based inferences. The current study advances theory by integrating the fast and frugal heuristics with HyGene, a memory‐based model of how decision makers generate and evaluate hypotheses. Using archival data in which memory retrieval variables were not directly manipulated, we demonstrate that participants' cue selection behavior is consistent with memory‐based retrieval. Further, by directly manipulating memory retrieval within a cue‐based stock‐forecasting task, we demonstrate that memory processes underlie cue use. Participants' cue use varied depending on the relationship between cue validity and the frequency with which the cues were seen during learning. The HyGene model provided the best account of the empirical data, providing further evidence for the critical role of memory in judgment and decision making. Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Does causal knowledge help us be faster and more frugal in our decisions?

One challenge that has to be addressed by the fast and frugal heuristics program is how people manage to select, from the abundance of cues that exist in the environment, those to rely on when making decisions. We hypothesize that causal knowledge helps people target particular cues and estimate their validities. This hypothesis was tested in three experiments. Results show that when causal information about some cues was available (Experiment 1), participants preferred to search for these cues first and to base their decisions on them. When allowed to learn cue validities in addition to causal information (Experiment 2), participants also became more frugal (i.e., they searched fewer of the available cues), made more accurate decisions, and were more precise in estimating cue validities than was a control group that did not receive causal information. These results can be attributed to the causal relation between the cues and the criterion, rather than to greater saliency of the causal cues (Experiment 3). Overall, our results support the hypothesis that causal knowledge aids in the learning of cue validities and is treated as a meta-cue for identifying highly valid cues.     

Sequential processing of cues in memory-based multiattribute decisions

When probabilistic inferences have to be made from cue values stored in long-term memory, many participants appear to use fast and frugal heuristics, such as “take the best” (TTB), that assume sequential search of cues. A simultaneous global matching process with cue weights that are appropriately chosen would mimic the decision outcomes, albeit assuming different cognitive processes. We present a reanalysis of response times (RTs) from five published experiments (n 5 415) and one new experiment (n 5 82) that support the assumption of sequential search. In all instances in which decision outcomes indicated the use of TTB’s decision rule, decision times increased monotonically with the number of cues that had to be searched in memory. Furthermore, RT patterns fitted the outcome-based strategy classifications, which further validates both measures.     

Multiple Framing: Verbal,Facial, and Vocal Cues in Risky Choice

Verbal framing effects have been widely studied, but little is known about how people react to multiple framing cues in risk communication, where verbal messages are often accompanied by facial and vocal cues. We examined joint and differential effects of verbal, facial, and vocal framing on risk preference in hypothetical monetary and life–death situations. In the multiple framing condition with the factorial design (2 verbal frames × 2 vocal tones × 4 basic facial expressions × 2 task domains), each scenario was presented auditorily with a written message on a photo of the messenger's face. Compared with verbal framing effects resulting in preference reversal, multiple frames made risky choice more consistent and shifted risk preference without reversal. Moreover, a positive tone of voice increased risk‐seeking preference in women. When the valence of facial and vocal cues was incongruent with verbal frame, verbal framing effects were significant. In contrast, when the affect cues were congruent with verbal frame, framing effects disappeared. These results suggest that verbal framing is given higher priority when other affect cues are incongruent. Further analysis revealed that participants were more risk‐averse when positive affect cues (positive tone or facial expressions) were congruently paired with a positive verbal frame whereas participants were more risk‐seeking when positive affect cues were incongruent with the verbal frame. In contrast, for negative affect cues, congruency promoted risk‐seeking tendency whereas incongruency increased risk‐aversion. Overall, the results show that facial and vocal cues interact with verbal framing and significantly affect risk communication. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The effect of newly trained verbal and nonverbal labels for the cues in probabilistic category learning

Learning in a well-established paradigm of probabilistic category learning, the weather prediction task, has been assumed to be mediated by a variety of strategies reflecting explicit learning processes, such as hypothesis testing, when it is administered to young healthy participants. Higher categorization accuracy has been observed in the task when explicit processes are facilitated. We hypothesized that furnishing verbal labels for the cues would boost the formation, testing, and application of verbal rules, leading to higher categorization accuracy. We manipulated the availability of cue names by training separate groups of participants for three consecutive days to associate hard-to-name artificial auditory cues to pseudowords or to hard-to-name ideograms, or to associate stimulus intensity with colors; a fourth group remained unexposed to the cues. Verbal labels, cue individuation, and exposure to the stimulus set each had an additive effect on categorization performance in a subsequent 200-trial session of the weather prediction task using these auditory cues. This study suggests that cue nameability, when controlled for cue individuation and cue familiarity, has an effect on hypothesis-testing processes underlying category learning.     

The dimensions of deception detection: Self‐reported deception cue use is underpinned by two broad factors

Many perceived cues to deception have been reported in the literature, but little attention has been paid to how they are combined when making deception judgments. The present research used a data‐driven approach to investigate how cues are integrated when evaluating veracity. Two hundred fifteen participants performed a deception detection task before completing a deception cue use questionnaire. A factor analysis of the questionnaire data produced two dimensions, one associated with nonverbal cues to anxiety and the other associated with detail and level of involvement. The present work extends our understanding of deception detection processes and underlines the importance of examining not only the cues that people use but also the way in which they use them.     

Most people do not ignore salient invalid cues in memory-based decisions

Former experimental studies have shown that decisions from memory tend to rely only on a few cues, following simple noncompensatory heuristics like "take the best." However, it has also repeatedly been demonstrated that a pictorial, as opposed to a verbal, representation of cue information fosters the inclusion of more cues in compensatory strategies, suggesting a facilitated retrieval of cue patterns. These studies did not properly control for visual salience of cues, however. In the experiment reported here, the cue salience hierarchy established in a pilot study was either congruent or incongruent with the validity order of the cues. Only the latter condition increased compensatory decision making, suggesting that the apparent representational format effect is, rather, a salience effect: Participants automatically retrieve and incorporate salient cues irrespective of their validity. Results are discussed with respect to reaction time data.     

The road to the unconscious self not taken: Discrepancies between self‐ and observer‐inferences about implicit dispositions from nonverbal behavioural cues

To what extent can individuals gain insight into their own or another person's implicit dispositions' We investigated whether self‐perceivers versus neutral observers can detect implicit dispositions from nonverbal behavioural cues contained in video feedback (cue validity) and whether these cues are in turn used as a valid basis for explicit dispositional inferences (cue utilization). Across three studies in the domains of extraversion and anxiety we consistently obtained reliable cue validity and cue utilization for neutral observers but not for self‐perceivers. An additional measure of state inferences in Study 3 showed that one reason for the lack of mediation in self‐perceivers is their reluctance to use their state inferences as a basis for more general trait inferences. We conclude that people have a ‘blind spot’ with respect to the nonverbal behavioural manifestations of their unconscious selves, even though neutral observers may readily detect and utilize this information for dispositional inferences. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

What determines visual cue reliability?

Visual environments contain many cues to properties of an observed scene. To integrate information provided by multiple cues in an efficient manner, observers must assess the degree to which each cue provides reliable versus unreliable information. Two hypotheses are reviewed regarding how observers estimate cue reliabilities, namely that the estimated reliability of a cue is related to the ambiguity of the cue, and that people use correlations among cues to estimate cue reliabilities. Cue reliabilities are shown to be important both for cue combination and for aspects of visual learning.     

Coherence shifts in probabilistic inference tasks

The fast‐and‐frugal heuristics approach to probabilistic inference assumes that individuals often employ simple heuristics to integrate cue information that commonly function in a non‐reciprocal fashion. Specifically, the subjective validity of a certain cue remains stable during the application of a heuristic and is not changed by the presence or absence of another cue. The parallel constraint satisfaction (PCS) model, in contrast, predicts that information is processed in a reciprocal fashion. Specifically, it assumes that subjective cue validities interactively affect each other and are modified to coherently support the favored choice. Corresponding to the model's simulation, we predicted the direction and the size of such coherence shifts. Cue validities were measured before, after (Experiment 1), and during judgment (Experiments 2 and 3). Coherence shifts were found in environments involving real‐world cue knowledge (weather forecasts) and in a domain for which the application of fast‐and‐frugal heuristics has been demonstrated (city‐size tasks). The results indicate that subjective cue validities are not fixed parameters, but that they are interactively changed to form coherent representations of the task. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Probabilistic Inferences Under Emotional Stress: How Arousal Affects Decision Processes

Many models of decision making neglect emotional states that could affect individuals' cognitive processes. The present work explores the effect of emotional stress on people's cognitive processes when making probabilistic inferences. Two contrasting hypotheses are tested against one another: the uncertainty‐reduction and attention‐narrowing hypotheses of how emotional stress affects decision making. In the experimental study, emotional stress was induced through the use of highly aversive pictures immediately before each decision. Emotional state was assessed by both subjective (state anxiety, arousal, and pleasantness ratings) and objective (skin conductance) measures. The results show that emotional stress impacts decision making; in particular, emotionally aroused participants seem to have focused on the most important information and selected simpler decision strategies relative to participants in a control condition. The results are in line with the attention‐narrowing hypothesis and suggest that emotional stress can impact decision making through limited predecisional information search and the selection of simpler decision strategies. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Landmark use by Clark’s nutcrackers (Nucifraga columbiana): influence of disorientation and cue rotation on distance and direction estimates

Many species have been shown to encode multiple sources of information to orient. To examine what kinds of information animals use to locate a goal we manipulated cue rotation, cue availability, and inertial orientation when the food-storing Clark’s nutcracker (Nucifraga columbiana) was searching for a hidden goal in a circular arena. Three groups of birds were used, each with a different goal–landmark distance. As the distance between the goal and the landmark increased, nutcrackers were less accurate in finding the correct direction to the goal than they were at estimating the distance (Experiment 1). To further examine what cues the birds were using to calculate direction, the featural cues within the environment were rotated by 90° and the birds were either oriented when searching (Experiments 2 and 3) or disoriented (Experiment 3). In Experiment 4, all distinctive visual cues were removed (both internal and external to the environment), a novel point of entry was used and the birds were either oriented or disoriented. We found that disorienting the nutcrackers so that they could not use inertial cues did not influence the birds’ total search error. The birds relied heavily but not completely on cues within the environment, as rotating available cues caused them to systematically shift their search behavior. In addition, the birds also relied to some extent on Earth-based cues. These results show the flexible nature of cue use by the Clark’s nutcracker. Our study shows how multiple sources of spatial information may be important for extracting multiple bearings for navigation.     

Optimal cue aggregation in the absence of criterion knowledge

The study of multi‐cue judgment investigates how decision makers aggregate cues to predict the value of a criterion variable. We consider a multi‐cue judgment task in which decision makers have prior knowledge of inter‐cue relationships but are ignorant of how the cues correlate with the criterion. In this setting, a naive judgment strategy prescribes weighting the cues equally. Although many participants are well described via an equal weighting scheme, we find that a substantial minority of participants make predictions consistent with a weighting scheme based on a low‐dimensional projection of the cue space that optimally takes into account inter‐cue correlations. The use of such a weighting scheme is consistent with minimizing maximal error in prediction when the cue‐criterion relationships are unknown.