Abstract

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Brase & Barbey (in press, Nova publishers book chapter)
This chapter reviews ongoing research on human statistical reasoning, looking at the relationships between how information is presented, how numerical information is subsequently represented in the mind, and how the resulting judgments are made. At each of these stages there are both emerging conclusions and ongoing debates. Information presented in the form of frequencies appears to be more easily accepted into the cognitive judgment mechanisms, as is information presented in clearly organized relationships. Clarifications are necessary, however, regarding what constitute frequency presentations and the isomorphism of organizational relationships that have been proposed to be facilitatory. The actual reasoning processes are constrained (or enabled, as it were) by the nature of these mental representations. Finally, the benchmarks by which human judgments are evaluated – the markers for claiming that humans are “good” or “poor” at statistical reasoning – are assessed.