The use of recognition information and additional cues in inferences from memory

Goldstein and Gigerenzer's (2002) "Recognition Heuristic" (RH) was tested for its empirical validity in an experimental paradigm with induced recognition of objects. RH claims that upon inferring which of two objects (e.g., cities) scores higher on a criterion (e.g., city size), a recognized object will be chosen over an unrecognized one, if the recognition is a valid predictor of the criterion without considering additional object information. Trying to avoid potential shortcomings of former studies, we (a) used the city population task, (b) provided additional cue information only for recognized cities, and (c) had participants draw inferences from memory. Participants learned city names and additional information about some cities. They also learned that recognition and the additional information were valid predictors of the criterion "city size". In a subsequent decision phase, the additional information about the cities in memory strongly affected the inferences, suggesting that recognition information is clearly integrated into judgments, but by no means in a non-compensatory fashion that would dominate every other cue.