Estimates of frequency: Attribute or attribution?

Abstract

Subjects in two experiments were asked to estimate how often items had appeared in a studied list. If the estimates are based on the value of a frequency attribute, the implicit question is, "How many times did you think of this item during study?" If, on the other hand, estimates are memorial attributions, the implicit question is, "How many study episodes does this item now make you think of?" In Experiment 1, subjects studied items that were repeated with the same or a different partner on each appearance. Items studied with a different partner each time received higher estimates than those with the same partner, but only if the items were semantic relatives of the partners. Thus, if tested items are strong cues for their partners, estimates of frequency benefit from contextual variety, implying that the partners are accessed during the test episode. In Experiment 2, several types of items were processed in several different ways. The result was that variables that enhance old-new discrimination also enhance the quality of estimates of frequency, implying that the two measures are based on the same cognitive stuff. Our conclusion is that judged frequency is attributed to items because of the memorial information they access at test.The research was supported by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Grant A8122 to Ian Begg. We thank Douglas Hintzman, John Jonides, and Robert Rose for their detailed comments on an earlier version, and Larry Jacoby, Lee Brooks, and Andrea Snider for helpful discussions. We thank Larry Jacoby for suggesting the attribute versus attribution terminology as a way to capture the distinction we had in mind.

Judgments of Risk Frequencies: Tests of Possible Cognitive Mechanisms.

“…In contrast to Lichtenstein et al's (1978) view, which assumes that people have biased knowledge of risk frequencies because of "disproportionate exposure, memorability, or imaginability of various events" (p. 551), the regressed-frequency mechanism assumes that people's frequency knowledge is roughly accurate except for the estimates' tendency to regress toward the mean. It should be noted that not only is this tendency akin to the primary bias observed by Lichtenstein et al but also it is ubiquitous in studies of other types of frequency judgments (e.g., Begg, Maxwell, Mitterer, & Harris, 1986;Greene, 1984;Hintzman, 1969Hintzman, , 1988Sedlmeier et al, 1998;Shanks, 1995;Williams & Durso, 1986;Zacks & Hasher, 2002).…”

Availability and category-frequency estimation

“…Any of a number of underlying processes could operate (cf. Begg, Maxwell, Mitterer, & Harris, 1986;Jonides & Naveh-Benjamin, 1987). The present investigations identify both encoding and retrieval circumstances that influence adoption of an availability strategy.…”

Tests of encoding tradeoffs between item and associative information

“…Several studies have demonstrated that cued recall and pair recognition are greater following interactive rather than separate imagery, whereas item recognition is better for words imagined separately than for words imagined interactively (Bain & Humphreys, 1988;Begg, 1979;McGee, 1980). In addition, Begg, Maxwell, Mitterer, and Harris (1986) found that judgments of item frequency were more accurate for separately imagined items than for items that were imagined interactively. These results suggest a tradeoff between the encoding of item and associative information.…”