Information selection and use in hypothesis testing : what is a good question, and what is a good answer ?

The process of hypothesis testing entails both information selection (asking questions) and information use (drawing inferences from the answers to those questions). We demonstrate that although subjects may be sensitive to diagnosticity in choosing which questions to ask, they are insufficiently se...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inMemory & cognition Vol. 20; no. 4; pp. 392 - 405
Main Authors SLOWIACZEK, L. M, KLAYMAN, J, SHERMAN, S. J, SKOV, R. B
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Austin, TX Psychonomic Society 01.07.1992
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Adult
Attention
Bayes Theorem
Behavior
Biological and medical sciences
Cognition & reasoning
Cognition. Intelligence
Communication disorders
Concept Formation
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Hypotheses
Hypothesis testing
Mental Recall
Probability Learning
Problem Solving
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Reasoning. Problem solving
Social research
Human
Hypothesis test
Information use
Reasoning
Selection
Inference
Cognition
Question answering
Experimental study
Information
Categorization
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Summary:The process of hypothesis testing entails both information selection (asking questions) and information use (drawing inferences from the answers to those questions). We demonstrate that although subjects may be sensitive to diagnosticity in choosing which questions to ask, they are insufficiently sensitive to the fact that different answers to the same question can have very different diagnosticities. This can lead subjects to overestimate or underestimate the information in the answers they receive. This phenomenon is demonstrated in two experiments using different kinds of inferences (category membership of individuals and composition of sampled populations). In combination with certain information-gathering tendencies, demonstrated in a third experiment, insensitivity to answer diagnosticity can contribute to a tendency toward preservation of the initial hypothesis. Results such as these illustrate the importance of viewing hypothesis-testing behavior as an interactive, multistage process that includes selecting questions, interpreting data, and drawing inferences.
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content type line 23
ISSN:0090-502X
1532-5946
DOI:10.3758/BF03210923