Compound cue processing within the fast and frugal heuristics approach in nonlinearly separable environments (2007)
Abstract
Three experiments investigated whether participants used Take The Best (TTB) Configural, a fast and frugal heuristic that processes configurations of cues when making inferences concerning which of two alternatives has a higher criterion value. Participants were presented with a compound cue that was nonlinearly separable from its elements. The compound was highly valid in Experiments 1 and 2, but invalid in Experiment 3. Participants' causal mental models were manipulated via instructions: participants were either told that cues acted through the same causal mechanism (configural causal model), through different causal mechanisms (elemental causal model), or the causal mechanisms were not specified (neutral causal model). A high percentage of participants used TTB-Configural when they had a configural causal model and a highly valid compound existed, suggesting that causal knowledge can be incorporated in otherwise very basic cognitive mechanisms to allow fine-grained adaptation to complex task structures. ?? 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Bibliographic entry
García-Retamero, R., Hoffrage, U., Dieckmann, A., & Ramos, M. (2007). Compound cue processing within the fast and frugal heuristics approach in nonlinearly separable environments. Learning and Motivation, 38, 16-34. (Full text)
Miscellaneous
| Publication year | 2007 | |
|---|---|---|
| Document type: | Article | |
| Publication status: | Published | |
| External URL: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lmot.2006.05.001 View | |
| Categories: | Take-the-bestEnvironment Structure | |
| Keywords: | causal knowledgeconfigurationdecision makingfast and frugal heuristicsnonlinearly separable |