Abstract
In sequential diagnostic reasoning, observed evidence activates hypotheses about possible causes in memory. These memory activations have been previously examined with a probe reaction task for problems with a single correct diagnosis. We applied this process tracing method to ambiguous problems with multiple compatible hypotheses. When participants reasoned about the causes of ambiguous symptom sequences, they were prompted to respond to probes representing hypotheses. The response time to a probe was shorter if the current support for the respective hypothesis was stronger indicating that the processing of compatible hypotheses can be traced. For sequences with two equally supported hypotheses, the initial hypothesis was more often chosen as the final diagnosis (a primacy effect). Probe reaction times suggest that the initial hypothesis has been activated more strongly already early, when it was finally chosen as the diagnosis. Nevertheless, substantial variance in response times limits the task's applicability for process tracing.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | Journal of Cognitive Psychology |
| Volume | 27 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| Pages (from-to) | 780-796 |
| Number of pages | 17 |
| ISSN | 2044-5911 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 16.02.2015 |
Funding
Correspondence should be addressed to Felix G. Rebitschek, Department of Psychology, University of Greifswald, Franz-Mehring-Str. 47, 17487 Greifswald, Germany. E-mail: [email protected] Present address: Felix G. Rebitschek, Harding Center for Risk Literacy, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, 14195 Berlin, Germany; Georg Jahn, Institute for Multimedia and Interactive Systems, University of Luebeck, 23562 Luebeck, Germany. We are grateful to Janina Braatz for her help with collecting data. No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors. This work was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) [grant number JA 1761/7-1], [grant number KR 1057/17-1].