Etc.
Frequency Processing and Cognition
Published on 15. August 2002
Book
Hardback
332 pages
978-0-19-850863-2 (ISBN)
Description
From childhood, each of us develops our own personal set of theories and beliefs about the world in which we live. Given the impossibility of knowing about every event that can ever take place, we use cognitive short cuts to try to predict and make sense of the world around us. One of the fundamental pieces of information we use to predict future events, and make sense of past events, is 'frequency' - how often has such an event happened to us, or how often have we observed a particular event? With such information we will make inferences about the likelihood of its future appearance. We will make judgements, assess risk, or even consumer decisions, on the basis of this information. We also form associations between events that frequently occur together, and even (often incorrectly) attribute causality between one event and the other as a result of their simultaneous appearance.
How is it though that we process such information? How does our brain deal with information on frequencies? How does such information influence our behaviour, beliefs, and judgements? Important new findings on this topic have come from research within both social and cognitive psychology, though until now, never brought together in a single volume.
This is the first book to bring together two disparate literatures on this topic - drawing on research from both cognitive psychology and social psychology. Including contributions from world leaders in the field, this is a timely, and long overdue volume on this topic.
How is it though that we process such information? How does our brain deal with information on frequencies? How does such information influence our behaviour, beliefs, and judgements? Important new findings on this topic have come from research within both social and cognitive psychology, though until now, never brought together in a single volume.
This is the first book to bring together two disparate literatures on this topic - drawing on research from both cognitive psychology and social psychology. Including contributions from world leaders in the field, this is a timely, and long overdue volume on this topic.
Reviews / Votes
This excellent collection provides the reader with a comprehensive coverage of findings and theories about how people encode and summarize frequency information. While it is a smorgasbord of self-contained chapters with little cross-referencing (or elaboration of disagreements), the high quality of the vast majority of these chapters yields a cognitive feast. They are written by eminent researchers who have opted to present both recent results and summaries of their most important work - certainly not the feared secondary idea or paper submitted because it would be easier to publish in an edited volume than in critically peer reviewed journal. * Robyn M. Dawes, Charles J. Queenan, Jr. University Professor, Department of Social and Decision Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University, USA *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
numerous figures
Dimensions
Height: 250 mm
Width: 175 mm
Thickness: 23 mm
Weight
760 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-850863-2 (9780198508632)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Content
1. Frequency Processing and Cognition: Introduction and Overview ; THEORETICAL MODELS AND PERSPECTIVES ; 2. Frequency processing: A twenty-five year perspective ; 3. Encoding, representing and estimating event frequencies: A multiple strategy perspective ; 4. In the year 2054: Innumeracy defeated ; 5. Frequency judgements and retrieval structures: Splitting, zooming and merging the units of the empirical world ; 6. Experiential and contextual heuristics in frequency judgement: Ease of recall and response scales ; 7. Tversky and Kahneman's availability approach to frequency judgement: a critical analysis ; 8. A memory models approach to frequency and probability judgement: Applications of Minerva 2 and Minerva-DM ; 9. Associative learning and frequency judgements: The PASS model ; 10. Frequency, contingency and the information processing theory of conditioning ; ESSENTIAL EMPIRICAL RESULTS ; 11. Effects of processing fluency on estimates of probability and frequency ; 12. Frequency judgements of emotions: The cognitive basis of personality assessment ; 13. Online strategies versus memory-based strategies in frequency estimation ; 14. Frequency learning and order effects in belief updating ; 15. The psychophysics metaphor in calibration research ; PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS ; 16. Frequency effects in consumer decision making ; 17. Free word associations and the frequency of co-occurrence in language use ; 18. Technology needs Psychology: How natural frequencies foster insight in medical and legal experts ; 19. Frequency processing and cognition: Stock-taking and outlook