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Long-term serial position effects in cue-based inference.
Ashley Lawrence1, Rick Thomas1, Michael Dougherty2
1School of Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, United States of America.
Plos One
|July 19, 2018
Summary
Decision-making relies on more than just cue validity; memory accessibility significantly influences cue selection. Participants favored cues that appeared earlier in learning, demonstrating a memory retrieval effect on heuristic decision-making.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Decision Science
- Behavioral Economics
Background:
- Decision-making models often assume cue properties, like validity, drive pre-decision processes.
- The role of memory accessibility in cue generation remains underexplored.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how memory accessibility influences cue use in decision-making.
- To test if cue use is determined solely by cue validity or also by memory retrieval mechanisms.
Main Methods:
- Two studies employed a stock-forecasting task.
- Ecological cue validity and cue accessibility were manipulated.
- Cue accessibility was varied by altering the serial position of accurate cue discriminations during learning.
Main Results:
- Participants showed a preference for cues that discriminated early in the learning phase (primacy effect).
- Cue use was influenced by memory retrieval, not just cue validity.
- This effect persisted even when overall cue validity was held constant.
Conclusions:
- Memory accessibility plays a crucial role in cue generation and selection during decision-making.
- Decision-making heuristics are shaped by memory retrieval processes.
- Findings necessitate refining computational models of heuristic decision-making.
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