The capacity of short-term memory is a key constraint when people make online judgments requiring them to rely on samples retrieved from memory (e.g., Dougherty & Hunter, 2003). In this article, the authors compare 2 accounts of how people use knowledge of statistical distributions to make point estimates: either by retrieving precomputed…

This article explores the configural weighted average (CWA) hypothesis suggesting that extension biases, like conjunction and disjunction errors, occur because people estimate compound probabilities by taking a CWA of the constituent probabilities. The hypothesis suggests a process consistent with well-known cognitive constraints, which…