The Moderating Role of Category Salience and Category Focus in Judgments of Set Size and Frequency of Occurrence

Abstract

Recent work on frequency estimation has provided evidence that availability, as measured by recall, determines judgments of set size but not of frequency of occurrence. The latter in turn rather reflect actual presentation frequencies. In contrast, the present series of experiments shows that by controlling category focus during encoding and category salience during recall, a dramatically altered pattern of effects is obtained. Adopting the research methodology of Manis, Shedler, Jonides, and Nelson (1993), the authors demonstrate that recall does influence frequency of occurrence judgments if the superordinate category is brought into focus during encoding. Furthermore, set size judgments reflect actual presentation frequencies and are almost uninfluenced by recall if the superordinate category is not salient during recall.