Aspects of memory capacity and confidence in contingency judgements

Abstract

Theories of contingency judgements generally agree that (1) memory is a structure that possesses a limited capacity and that (2) it plays an important role in the detection and assessment of covariations. Empirical evidence, although limited in the specific context of contingency judgements, seems to support these notions. While theorists agree that some information needs to be held in memory in order to reach a contingency judgement, they disagree, however, on the exact type of information. As a result, they offer different predictions as to what would increase memory load as involved in contingency judgements. Kareev (1995, 1997) implicitly assumes that people attempt to memorize the sequence of events leading to a contingency judgement and, therefore, the longer the series of events, the higher the memory load. On the other hand, Wagner (1976, 1981; Rescorla & Wagner, 1972) proposes that people base their judgement on the strength of a "mental bond" rather than the recall of the series of episodes. In this view, the manipulation that taxes memory capacity is not the length of a series of events but the presence of multiple simultaneous contingencies. The current thesis aimed at clarifying the role that memory plays in the assessment of covariations by contrasting these two opposing viewpoints. Five experiments examined the role of memory capacity in contingency judgements by means of: (1) increasing the length of the series of single events experienced; (2) increasing the number of contingencies presented simultaneously; (3) examining the effect of individual memory capacity. Results generally support Wagner's theory with additional findings falling outside of the theory's explanatory power.