| 1. |
- Forsgren, Mattias, et al.
(författare)
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Further perceptions of probability : In defence of associative models
- 2023
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Ingår i: Psychological review. - : American Psychological Association (APA). - 0033-295X .- 1939-1471. ; 130:5, s. 1383-1400
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Extensive research in the behavioral sciences has addressed people’s ability to learn stationary probabilities, which stay constant over time, but only recently have there been attempts to model the cognitive processes whereby people learn—and track—nonstationary probabilities. In this context, the old debate on whether learning occurs by the gradual formation of associations or by occasional shifts between hypotheses representing beliefs about distal states of the world has resurfaced. Gallistel et al. (2014) pitched the two theories against each other in a nonstationary probability learning task. They concluded that various qualitative patterns in their data were incompatible with trial-by-trial associative learning and could only be explained by a hypothesis-testing model. Here, we contest that claim and demonstrate that it was premature. First, we argue that their experimental paradigm consisted of two distinct tasks: probability tracking (an estimation task) and change detection (a decision-making task). Next, we present a model that uses the (associative) delta learning rule for the probability tracking task and bounded evidence accumulation for the change detection task. We find that this combination of two highly established theories accounts well for all qualitative phenomena and outperforms the alternative model proposed by Gallistel et al. (2014) in a quantitative model comparison. In the spirit of cumulative science, we conclude that current experimental data on human learning of nonstationary probabilities can be explained as a combination of associative learning and bounded evidence accumulation and does not require a new model.
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| 2. |
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| 3. |
- Henriksson, Maria P., et al.
(författare)
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What is Coded into Memory in the Absence of Outcome Feedback?
- 2010
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Ingår i: Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory and Cognition. - : American Psychological Association (APA). - 0278-7393 .- 1939-1285. ; 36:1, s. 1-16
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Although people often have to learn from environments with scarce and highly selective outcome feedback, the question of how non-feedback trials are represented in memory and affect later performance has received little attention in models of learning and decision making. In this article, the Generalized Context Model (R. M. Nosofsky, 1986) is used as a vehicle to test contrasting hypotheses about the coding of non-feedback trials. Data across 3 experiments with selective decision-contingent and selective outcome-contingent feedback provide support for the hypothesis of constructivist coding (E. Elwin, P. Juslin, H. Olsson, & T. Enkvist, 2007), according to which the outcomes on non-feedback trials are coded with the most likely outcome, as inferred by the individual. The relation to sampling-based approaches to judgment, and the adaptive significance of constructivist coding, are discussed.
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| 4. |
- Lidén, Moa, et al.
(författare)
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"Guilty, No Doubt" : Detention Provoking Confirmation Bias in Judges' Guilt Assessments and Debiasing Techniques
- 2019
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Ingår i: Psychology, Crime and Law. - 1068-316X .- 1477-2744. ; 25:3, s. 219-247
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This research examines whether judges’ pretrial detention decisions trigger confirmation bias in their guilt assessments. It also tests two strategies to mitigate confirmation bias: (1) to have different judges decide about detention and guilt and (2) to reduce cognitive load by structuring the evaluation of evidence. In Experiment 1, Swedish judges (N = 64) read 8 scenarios in which they either decided themselves about detention or were informed about a colleague’s decision. Then, participants rated the defendant’s trustworthiness, the strength of each piece of evidence, the total evidence and decided about guilt. In Experiment 2, Law students (N = 80) either first rated each piece of evidence separately and then the total evidence (structured evaluation) or only the total evidence (unstructured evaluation), and then decided about guilt. Overall, detained defendants were considered less trustworthy and when participants themselves detained, they rated the guilt consistent and total evidence as stronger and were more likely convict, compared to when a colleague had detained. The total evidence was considered stronger after unstructured than structured evaluations of the evidence but the evaluation mode did not influence guilt decisions. This suggests that changing decision maker holds greater debiasing potential than structuring evidence evaluation.
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| 5. |
- Lidén, Moa, et al.
(författare)
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Self-correction of wrongful convictions : is there a ‘System-level’ confirmation bias in the Swedish legal system’s appeal procedure for criminal cases?—Part I
- 2018
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Ingår i: Law, Probability and Risk. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 1470-8396 .- 1470-840X. ; 17:4, s. 311-336
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this study, we propose that confirmation bias may not only be present in the behaviors of individual agents in the judicial system but can also be recognized at a system-level as an inability to self-correct, that is, an inability to acquit wrongfully convicted who appeal or petition for a new trial. To assess the self-correctional ability a very low error rate of wrongful convictions in the District Courts in 2010-2014 was tentatively assumed. An empirical review of appeals (Part I) and petitions for new trials (Part II) in the Courts of Appeal and Supreme Court between 2010 and 2014 was carried out to evaluate to what extent these legal remedies can be expected to change wrongful convictions into acquittals. Realistic assumptions and empirical estimates of real-world statistics suggest that at least 34.67 % of the wrongfully convicted remained convicted despite the possibility both to appeal and petition for a new trial. A robustness analysis was performed to ascertain that the conclusions hold under a wide variety of assumptions about the unknown statistics. According to additional analyses the odds of an acquittal were low even for appeals referring to new innocence supportive evidence and for private individuals claiming to be innocent of e.g. assault or murder the odds of being granted new criminal trials were particularly low.
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| 6. |
- Lidén, Moa, et al.
(författare)
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Self-correction of wrongful convictions : is there a “System-level” confirmation bias in the Swedish legal system’s appeal procedure for criminal cases?—Part II
- 2018
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Ingår i: Law, Probability and Risk. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 1470-8396 .- 1470-840X. ; 17:4, s. 337-356
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this study, we propose that confirmation bias may not only be present in the behaviors of individual agents in the judicial system but can also be recognized at a “system-level” as an inability to self-correct, that is, an inability to acquit wrongfully convicted who appeal or petition for a new trial. To assess the self-correctional ability a very low error rate of wrongful convictions in the District Courts in 2010-2014 was tentatively assumed. An empirical review of appeals (Part I) and petitions for new trials (Part II) in the Courts of Appeal and Supreme Court between 2010 and 2014 was carried out to evaluate to what extent these legal remedies can be expected to change wrongful convictions into acquittals. Realistic assumptions and empirical estimates of real-world statistics suggest that at least 34.67 % of the wrongfully convicted remained convicted despite the possibility both to appeal and petition for a new trial. A robustness analysis was performed to ascertain that the conclusions hold under a wide variety of assumptions about the unknown statistics. According to additional analyses the odds of an acquittal were low even for appeals referring to new innocence supportive evidence and for private individuals claiming to be innocent of e.g. assault or murder the odds of being granted new criminal trials were particularly low.
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| 7. |
- Lidén, Moa, et al.
(författare)
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The Presumption of Guilt in Suspect Interrogations : Apprehension as a Trigger of Confirmation Bias and Debiasing Techniques
- 2018
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Ingår i: Law and human behavior. - : American Psychological Association (APA). - 0147-7307 .- 1573-661X. ; 42:4, s. 336-354
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This research tests whether a police officer’s decision to apprehend a suspect triggers confirmation bias during an interrogation. The study also tests two strategies to reduce confirmation bias: (1) decoupling decision to apprehend from interrogation and (2) reducing cognitive load for the interrogating police officer. In Experiment 1, Swedish police officers (N = 60) were faced with 12 scenarios in which they either had to decide for themselves whether to apprehend a suspect or were informed about the corresponding decision by another police officer or a prosecutor. Participants then prepared questions for a suspect interrogation and evaluated the trustworthiness of the suspect’s denial or confession. The same method was used in Experiment 2 but with law and psychology students (N = 60) as participants. In Experiment 3, psychology students (N = 60) prepared interrogation questions either by freely producing their own or by choosing questions from a preset list. Overall, apprehended suspects were interrogated in a more guilt presumptive way and rated as less trustworthy than non apprehended suspects. However, the tested debiasing techniques, primarily reducing cognitive load for the interrogating police officer, hold some potential in mitigating this bias.
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| 8. |
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| 9. |
- Stengård, Elina, 1988-, et al.
(författare)
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How Deep Is Your Bayesianism? : Peeling the Layers of the Intuitive Bayesian
- 2022
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Ingår i: Decision. - : American Psychological Association (APA). - 2325-9965 .- 2325-9973. ; 9:4, s. 321-346
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Studies in perception have found that humans often behave in accordance with Bayesian principles, while studies in higher-level cognition tend to find the opposite. A key methodological difference is that perceptual studies typically focus on whether people weight sensory cues according to their precision (determined by sensory noise levels), while studies with cognitive tasks concentrate on explicit inverse inference from likelihoods to posteriors. Here, we investigate if lay-people spontaneously engage in precision weighting in three cognitive inference tasks that require combining prior information with new data. We peel the layers of the “intuitive Bayesian” by categorizing participants into four categories: (a) No appreciation for the need to consider both prior and data; (b) Consideration of both prior and data; (c) Appreciation of the need to weight the prior and data according to their precision; (d) Ability to explicitly distinguish the inverse probabilities and perform inferences from description (rather than experience). The results suggest that with a lenient coding criterion, 58% of the participants appreciated the need to consider both the prior and data, 25% appreciated the need to weight them with their precision, but only 12% correctly solved the tasks that required understanding of inverse probabilities. Hence, while many participants weigh the data against priors, as in perceptual studies, they seem to have difficulty with “unpacking” symbols into their real-world extensions, like frequencies and sample sizes, and understanding inverse probability. Regardless of other task differences, people thus have larger difficulty with aspects of Bayesian performance typically probed in “cognitive studies.”
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| 10. |
- Stengård, Elina, 1988-, et al.
(författare)
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On the generality and cognitive basis of base-rate neglect
- 2022
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Ingår i: Cognition. - : Elsevier BV. - 0010-0277 .- 1873-7838. ; 226
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Base rate neglect refers to people's apparent tendency to underweight or even ignore base rate information when estimating posterior probabilities for events, such as the probability that a person with a positive cancer-test outcome actually does have cancer. While often replicated, almost all evidence for the phenomenon comes from studies that used problems with extremely low base rates, high hit rates, and low false alarm rates. It is currently unclear whether the effect generalizes to reasoning problems outside this “corner” of the entire problem space. Another limitation of previous studies is that they have focused on describing empirical patterns of the effect at the group level and not so much on the underlying strategies and individual differences. Here, we address these two limitations by testing participants on a broader problem space and modeling their responses at a single-participant level. We find that the empirical patterns that have served as evidence for base-rate neglect generalize to a larger problem space, albeit with large individual differences in the extent with which participants “neglect” base rates. In particular, we find a bi-modal distribution consisting of one group of participants who almost entirely ignore the base rate and another group who almost entirely account for it. This heterogeneity is reflected in the cognitive modeling results: participants in the former group were best captured by a linear-additive model, while participants in the latter group were best captured by a Bayesian model. We find little evidence for heuristic models. Altogether, these results suggest that the effect known as “base-rate neglect” generalizes to a large set of reasoning problems, but varies largely across participants and may need a reinterpretation in terms of the underlying cognitive mechanisms.
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