| Summary: | Four laboratory
studies were conducted to test the hypothesis that correct Bayesian reasoning
can be predicted by two factors of task complexity --- the number of mental
steps required to reach the normative solution, and the compatibility between
the framing of data presented and the framing of the question posed. The
findings show that participants performed better on frequency format questions
only when one mental step was required to solve the task and when the data were
in a compatible frequency format. By contrast, participants performed more
poorly on more complicated tasks which required more mental steps (in a
compatible frequency or probability format) or when the data and question
formats were incompatible (Studies 1 and 2). Incompatibility between data and
question formats was also associated with higher reaction times (Study 2b).
Furthermore, on problems that incorporated incompatibility between the data
sample size and the target (question) sample size, participants performed
better on the probability question than the frequency question, regardless of
data format (Study 3). The latter findings highlight the ecological advantage
of translating data into probability terms, which are normalized in a range
between 0 and 1, and thus can be transferred from one situation to
another.
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