Cognitive aging and the adaptive use of recognition in decision making.

Abstract

The recognition heuristic, which predicts that a recognized object scores higher on some criterion than an unrecognized one, is a simple inference strategy and thus an attractive mental tool for making inferences with limited cognitive resources-for instance, in old age. In spite of its simplicity, the recognition heuristic might be negatively affected in old age by too much knowledge, inaccurate memory, or deficits in its adaptive use. Across 2 studies, we investigated the impact of cognitive aging on the applicability, accuracy, and adaptive use of the recognition heuristic. Our results show that (a) young and old adults' recognition knowledge was an equally useful cue for making inferences about the world; (b) as with young adults, old adults adjusted their use of the recognition heuristic between environments with high and low recognition validities; and (c) old adults, however, showed constraints in their ability to adaptively suspend the recognition heuristic on specific items. Measures of fluid intelligence mediated these age-related constraints.

Individual differences in use of the recognition heuristic are stable across time, choice objects, domains, and presentation formats

“…Kantner & Lindsay, 2012) or to statistical peculiarities of the r-model that might bias stability assessment, we replicated the main analyses using all measures of RH use previously employed in the relevant literature: the adherence rate (i.e., the proportion of cases in which the recognized object is chosen), the indices c (i.e., the tendency to follow the recognition cue) and d' (i.e., the ability to discriminate cases in which recognition yields a correct vs. a false inference) derived from signal detection theory (Pachur et al, 2009), and the discrimination index (DI; Hilbig & Pohl, 2008), similar to the discriminability parameter d'. For this purpose, we calculated the respective measures for each participant and each test occasion separately and used standard methods of stability assessment (i.e., Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients), summarized in Table 1.…”

“…In particular, Pachur et al (2009) showed that elderly people use the RH more often than young adults do (see also Horn, Pachur, & Mata, 2015). Extending this line of research to the life span, Pohl, von Massow, and Beckmann (2015) detected a nonmonotonic trend in RH use in younger age groups: Preadolescent children and young adults used the RH about equally often, whereas adolescents used it more frequently.…”

“…In general, RH use increases, the greater the importance of a quick decision (Hilbig, Erdfelder, & Pohl, 2012;Pachur & Hertwig, 2006) and the higher the validity of the recognition cue (Castela, Kellen, Erdfelder, & Hilbig, 2014;Hilbig, Erdfelder, & Pohl, 2010;Pachur, Mata, & Schooler, 2009;Pohl, 2006;Scheibehenne & Bröder, 2007). By contrast, integration of further knowledge increases as knowledge becomes more easily available and easier to integrate (Bröder & Eichler, 2006;Glöckner & Bröder, 2011;Hilbig, Michalkiewicz, Castela, Pohl, & Erdfelder, 2015; Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.3758/s13421-015-0567-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.…”

“…For instance, apart from neuroticism, Hilbig (2008) also investigated agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness, and extraversion, but did not find any substantial effect on RH use. Similarly, Pachur et al (2009) tested associations between measures of inhibitory control and RH use without finding evidence for substantial correlations. Furthermore, Bröder (2012) summarized multiple studies on the take-the-best heuristic (TTB; Gigerenzer & Goldstein, 1999) and various cognitive and personality traits.…”

From recognition to decisions: Extending and testing recognition-based models for multialternative inference

“…As is well known in the model selection literature, the method employed will influence the outcomes of model comparisons. In fact, when one exclusively considers the models' ability to fit existing data, some people's inferences are best accounted for by the competing models (Figures 6-11), lending support to the thesis that there are individual differences in people's reliance on recognition (Hilbig, 2008;Pachur et al, 2008;Pachur, Mata, & Schooler, 2009), just as there may be individual differences in people's use of other decision strategies (e.g., Bergert & Nosofsky, 2007;Bröder & Gaissmaier, 2007;Cokely & Kelley, 2009;Mata, Schooler, & Rieskamp, 2007;Rieskamp & Otto, 2006).…”