Abstract
We report two experiments about how people estimate the frequency of event properties when they are explicitly (e.g.,spinach—GREEN) and implicitly (e.g.,spinach) presented. In Experiment 1, verbal reports indicated that, for explicitly presented properties, participants used several retrieval- and impressionbased strategies and were relatively accurate. Implicitly presented properties led tooff-target retrieval, which brought to mind more instances of nontarget than of target properties and degraded estimates. A third group estimated the frequency of taxonomic categories (e.g.,furniture) much as the explicit property group did, suggesting that people can use properties to organize remembered events. In a second experiment, estimation time patterns underscored the results of Experiment 1 and eliminated reactive verbal reports as an explanation. Off-target retrieval was both ineffective and slow.
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Some of the material contained in this article was presented at the 1999 conference of the American Association for Public Opinion Research. The work was carried out while the first author was employed at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The views expressed here reflect the opinions of the authors and not those of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
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Conrad, F.G., Brown, N.R. & DASHEN, M. Estimating the frequency of events from unnatural categories. Memory & Cognition 31, 552–562 (2003). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03196096
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03196096