Premium
BASE‐RATE NEGLECT AS A FUNCTION OF BASE RATES IN PROBABILISTIC CONTINGENCY LEARNING
Author(s) -
Kutzner Florian,
Freytag Peter,
Vogel Tobias,
Fiedler Klaus
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
journal of the experimental analysis of behavior
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.75
H-Index - 61
eISSN - 1938-3711
pISSN - 0022-5002
DOI - 10.1901/jeab.2008.90-23
Subject(s) - neglect , base (topology) , probabilistic logic , contingency , statistics , matching (statistics) , psychology , function (biology) , event (particle physics) , computer science , econometrics , mathematics , biology , mathematical analysis , linguistics , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics , evolutionary biology , psychiatry
When humans predict criterion events based on probabilistic predictors, they often lend excessive weight to the predictor and insufficient weight to the base rate of the criterion event. In an operant analysis, using a matching‐to‐sample paradigm, Goodie and Fantino (1996) showed that humans exhibit base‐rate neglect when predictors are associated with criterion events through physical similarity. In partial replications of their studies, we demonstrated similar effects when the predictors resembled the criterion events in terms of similarly skewed base rates. Participants' predictions were biased toward the more (or less) frequent criterion event following the more (or less) frequent predictor. This finding adds to the growing evidence for pseudocontingencies (Fiedler & Freytag, 2004), a framework that stresses base‐rate influences on contingency learning.