Theoretical frameworks
The number of contrasting theoretical frameworks that Barbey & Sloman (B&S) face is impressive on the face of it – four against one.But are all these distinctions appropriate or scientifically useful? The short way to demonstrate they are not is to simply note that the same theorists (Gigerenzer, Cosmides, and Tooby) are repeatedly invoked for all of the first three frameworks.
The longer demonstration is to dismantle these accounts sequentially. There is the “Mind as Swiss army knife” framework that is distinguished by unavailability to conscious awareness or deliberate control (cognitive impenetrability), and then there is the “Natural frequency algorithm” framework that is informationally encapsulated. But wait; those distinguishing characteristics are actually imposed by others (e.g., Fodor Reference Fodor1983) and rejected by the actual theorists under consideration here (e.g., Cosmides & Tooby Reference Cosmides, Tooby and Nadel2003; Duchaine et al. Reference Duchaine, Cosmides and Tooby2001; Ermer et al. Reference Ermer, Cosmides, Tooby, Gangstead and Simpson2007; Tooby et al. Reference Tooby, Cosmides, Barrett, Carruthers, Laurence and Stich2005; Tooby & Cosmides Reference Tooby, Cosmides and Buss2005). The first and second theoretical frameworks therefore collapse into a third one.
The third framework (incorporating the previous two), is a “Natural frequency heuristic” account, and is probably closest to the one actual and appropriate opposing view for B&S. The fourth framework (“Non-evolutionary natural frequency heuristic”) suggests that an appropriate position is to willfully disregard all evolutionary factors that have influenced the structure and function of the human mind. One can question the nature of the cognitive structures generated by evolutionary selection pressures, but it is not scientifically legitimate to simply deny evolution and replace viable evolutionary explanations with “one way or another, people can appreciate and use [natural sampling]” and that somehow “gives rise to” Bayesian reasoning (sect. 1.2.4). Such vague descriptive explanations would have effectively stagnated our understanding of visual processing or language acquisition, and will have that effect on other cognitive phenomena if unchecked.
This leaves us with two real frameworks, the final “nested sets/dual processes” framework and an ecological rationality framework – the two frameworks of the target article's title. It is not so much that there is no possibility of other frameworks, but rather, that the ones described by B&S are not useful.
The empirical literature
Having constructed artificial required properties for the theoretical frameworks of others, B&S then tout the inability of those shackled frameworks to account for empirical results. As easy as this should be, given such a set up, it is nevertheless seriously flawed. Due to space constraints, I focus here on how my own research is considered within this target article. B&S use the findings of Brase et al. (Reference Brase, Fiddick and Harries2006) to support a claim that “Bayesian inference depends on domain general cognitive processes” that are strategically employed (sect. 2.1). This was not the original purpose, findings, or conclusions of our work – and for good reason. As B&S note in that very same section, there have been differences in absolute performance levels on Bayesian reasoning tasks, when comparing across research programs. These different research programs, however, had used different participants and different methods for obtaining those participants (e.g., paid versus classroom activity participation). Brase et al. (Reference Brase, Fiddick and Harries2006) sought to determine the effects of participant selection and recruitment methods on performance on such tasks, and found that there were, indeed, significant effects that were capable of accounting for all the differences in previous works. In summary, B&S make a confusion between performance and competence (Chomsky Reference Chomsky1965) when they try to infer cognitive abilities and structures from data showing that incentives affect performance (see also Crespi Reference Crespi1942; Reference Crespi1944).
There also appears to be some confusion about the nature of natural sampling and natural frequencies (i.e., naturally sampled frequencies). The use of a consistent reference class (sect. 2.3), also called using a partitive structure, nested sets, or subset relations, are all linguistic twists on what is, in fact, natural sampling (a point made many times by myself and others; Brase Reference Brase2002a; Reference Brase2002b; Brase & Barbey Reference Brase, Barbey and Columbus2006; Gigerenzer & Hoffrage Reference Gigerenzer and Hoffrage1999; Hoffrage et al. Reference Hoffrage, Gigerenzer, Krauss and Martignon2002). Natural sampling refers to the sequential acquisition of information (as in a natural environment) along with categorization of that information into meaningful, often overlapping, groups (see Brase et al. Reference Brase, Cosmides and Tooby1998 for some limitations on easily constructible categories.).
This confusion is starkly illustrated when B&S try to re-define the numerical formats used in Brase (Reference Brase2002b). First, natural frequencies are equated with simple frequencies by providing an incorrect example of the former (this example belongs to B&S and is not, as they claim, an inconsistency with the literature on the part of Brase Reference Brase2002b). In direct contradiction to B&S, a single numerical statement such as the simple frequencies used in Brase (Reference Brase2002b) cannot be identified as having a natural sampling structure. Second, B&S point out – correctly – that percentages can express single-event probabilities, but they then carry this too far in concluding that this is the only thing that probabilities can express. Indeed, as pointed out in Brase (Reference Brase2002b), percentages are also referred to as “relative frequencies” because they can be understood as frequencies that are normalized to a reference class of 100 (e.g., as when one says “90% of my students understand this topic”).
With B&S having misconstrued natural frequencies into simple frequencies, and misconstrued relative frequencies into probabilities, it is almost possible to claim that the results of Brase (Reference Brase2002b) indicate that single event probabilities are perceived equally well compared to natural frequencies. The remaining necessary manipulation is for B&S to also completely omit the other numerical format conditions used in Brase (Reference Brase2002b), which included actual single-event probabilities (and, no, these actual single-event probabilities were not understood as well or clearly as simple frequencies and relative frequencies).
