ARE JUDGMENTS OF THE POSITIONAL FREQUENCIES OF LETTERS SYSTEMATICALLYBIASED DUE TO AVAILABILITY

How do people estimate whether a particular letter is more frequent in the Ist versus in a later position? The authors tested 2 precise vers ions of the availability hypothesis, a hypothesis that assumes that fr equency processing occurs on the level of the phonological classes of vowels and consonants, and the regressed-frequencies hypothesis, which assumes monitoring of individual letters. Across 3 studies, it was fo und that (a) judgments of whether a letter is more frequent in the Ist or the 2nd position generally followed the actual proportions and (b) the estimated relative frequencies in the Ist versus the 2nd position closely agreed with the actual rank ordering, except for an overestim ation of low and underestimation of high values. These results favor t he regressed-frequencies hypothesis and challenge the conclusions abou t frequency judgments in the heuristics and biases literature.