Participant recruitment methods and statistical reasoning performance.

摘要: Optimal Bayesian reasoning performance has reportedly been elusive, and a variety of explanations have suggested for this situation. In series experiments, it is demonstrated that these difficulties with replication can be accounted by differences in participant-sampling methodologies. Specifically, the best performances are obtained students from top-tier, national universities who were paid their participation. Performance drops significantly as conditions altered regarding inducements (e.g., using unpaid participants) or participant source participants second-tier, regional university). Honours-programme undergraduates do better than regular within same university, participation creates superior performance, top-tier university lower ranked universities. Pictorial representations (supplementing problem text) usually slight facilitative effect across manipulations. These results indicate studies should take account methodological details focus more on relative levels rather absolute performance.