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The importance of learning when making inferences

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Author Info
Jörg Rieskamp

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Abstract

The assumption that people possess a repertoire of strategies to solve the inference problems they face has been made repeatedly. The experimental findings of two previous studies on strategy selection are reexamined from a learning perspective, which argues that people learn to select strategies for making probabilistic inferences. This learning process is modeled with the strategy selection learning (SSL) theory, which assumes that people develop subjective expectancies for the strategies they have. They select strategies proportional to their expectancies, which are updated on the basis of experience. For the study by Newell, Weston, and Shanks (2003) it can be shown that people did not anticipate the success of a strategy from the beginning of the experiment. Instead, the behavior observed at the end of the experiment was the result of a learning process that can be described by the SSL theory. For the second study, by Br\"oder and Schiffer (2006), the SSL theory is able to provide an explanation for why participants only slowly adapted to new environments in a dynamic inference situation. The reanalysis of the previous studies illustrates the importance of learning for probabilistic inferences.

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Publisher Info
Article provided by Society for Judgment and Decision Making in its journal Judgment and Decision Making.

Volume (Year): 3 (2008)
Issue (Month): (March)
Pages: 261-277
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Handle: RePEc:jdm:journl:v:3:y:2008:i::p:261-277

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Related research
Keywords: inferences; strategy selection; heuristics; learning theory; reinforcement learning; cognitive modeling.;

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References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Smith, Vernon L & Walker, James M, 1993. "Monetary Rewards and Decision Cost in Experimental Economics," Economic Inquiry, Oxford University Press, vol. 31(2), pages 245-61, April.
  2. Stahl, Dale O., 1996. "Boundedly Rational Rule Learning in a Guessing Game," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 303-330, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  3. Reinhard Selten, 1998. "Axiomatic Characterization of the Quadratic Scoring Rule," Experimental Economics, Springer, vol. 1(1), pages 43-61, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  4. Newell, Ben R. & Weston, Nicola J. & Shanks, David R., 2003. "Empirical tests of a fast-and-frugal heuristic: Not everyone "takes-the-best"," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 91(1), pages 82-96, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Arndt Bröder & Ben Newell, 2008. "Challenging some common beliefs: Empirical work within the adaptive toolbox metaphor," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 3, pages 205-214, March. [Downloadable!]
  2. Ben Newell & Arndt Bröder, 2008. "Cognitive processes, models and metaphors in decision research," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 3, pages 195-204, March. [Downloadable!]
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