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    Dependencies in evidential reports: the case for informational advantages

    Pilditch, T.D. and Hahn, Ulrike and Fenton, N. and Lagnado, D.A. (2020) Dependencies in evidential reports: the case for informational advantages. Cognition 204 (104343), ISSN 0010-0277.

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    Abstract

    Whether assessing the accuracy of expert forecasting, the pros and cons of group communication, or the value of evidence in diagnostic or predictive reasoning, dependencies between experts, group members, or evidence have traditionally been seen as a form of redundancy. We demonstrate that this conception of dependence conflates the structure of a dependency network, and the observations across this network. By disentangling these two elements we show, via mathematical proof and specific examples, that there are cases where dependencies yield an informational advantage over independence. More precisely, when a structural dependency exists, but observations are either partial or contradicting, these observations provide more support to a hypothesis than when this structural dependency does not exist, ceterus paribus. Furthermore, we show that lay reasoners endorse sufficient assumptions underpinning these advantageous structures yet fail to appreciate their implications for probability judgements and belief revision.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Science > School of Psychological Sciences
    Research Centres and Institutes: Cognition, Computation and Modelling, Centre for
    Depositing User: Ulrike Hahn
    Date Deposited: 10 Sep 2020 10:33
    Last Modified: 02 Aug 2023 18:04
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/40763

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