title: On people's understanding of the diagnostic implications of probabilistic data.
abstract: Two lines of prior research into the conditions under which people seek information are examined in light of two statistical definitions of diagnosticity. Five experiments are reported. In two, subjects selected information in order to test a hypothesis. In the remaining three, they selected information in order to convince someone else of the truth of a known hypothesis. A total of 567 university students served as subjects. The two primary conclusions were as follows: (1) When the task is highly structured by the environment, subjects select information diagnostically, and (2) when the task is less structured, so that subjects must seek relevant information not manifest, they select information pseudodiagnostically. Possible relations to other laboratory inference tasks and to clinical judgment are discussed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Bowling Green State University, OH 43403, USA. mdoher2@bgnet.bgsu.edu
authors.forename: M E
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Doherty
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Chadwick
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Garavan
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Barr
authors.forename: C R
authors.initials: CR
authors.lastname: Mynatt
mesh_terms: D003210:Concept Formation; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D011337:Probability Learning; D011340:Problem Solving; D012931:Social Environment