Chater, Nick

Crupi, Vincenzo

Tentori, Katya

English

Institutional Research Information System University of Turin

Cognitive Science 40 (2016) 758–778Copyright © 2015 Cognitive Science Society, Inc. All rights reserved.ISSN: 0364-0213 print / 1551-6709 onlineDOI: 10.1111/cogs.12259Judging the Probability of Hypotheses Versus the Impact of Evidence:Which Form of Inductive Inference Is More Accurate and Time-Consistent?Katya Tentori,a Nick Chater,b Vincenzo Crupic,daCenter for Mind/Brain Sciences, University of TrentobBehavioural Science Group, Warwick Business SchoolcCenter for Logic, Language, and Cognition, University of TurindMunich Center for Mathematical Philosophy, Ludwig Maximilian UniversityReceived 3 June 2014; received in revised form 20 December 2014; accepted 6 January 2015AbstractInductive reasoning requires exploiting links between evidence and hypotheses. This can bedone focusing either on the posterior probability of the hypothesis when updated on the new evi-dence or on the impact of the new evidence on the credibility of the hypothesis. But are these twocognitive representations equally reliable? This study investigates this question by comparingprobability and impact judgments on the same experimental materials. The results indicate thatimpact judgments are more consistent in time and more accurate than probability judgments.Impact judgments also predict the direction of errors in probability judgments. These findings sug-gest that human inductive reasoning relies more on estimating evidential impact than on posteriorprobability.Keywords: Inductive reasoning; Probabilistic reasoning; Inference; Impact; Confirmationjudgments; Confirmation measures1. Introduction1.1. Posterior probability and evidential impactHumans’ spectacular ability to draw inferences from limited information underpins per-ception, categorization, prediction, diagnostic reasoning, and scientific discovery. Suchinferences are inductive because they venture beyond the information given to draw conclu-sions that are probable given the available evidence but are not logically implied by it.Correspondence should be sent to Katya Tentori, CIMeC, Corso Bettini 31, 38068, Rovereto (TN), ItalyE-mail: katya.tentori@unitn.it

Judging the probability of hypotheses versus the impact of evidence: Which form of inductive inference is more accurate and time-consistent?

https://iris.unito.it/bitstream/2318/1559578/1/TentoriChaterCrupi2016_impact.pdf

Judging the probability of hypotheses versus the impact of evidence: Which form of inductive inference is more accurate and time-consistent?

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