Is memory for stimulus magnitude Bayesian?
This study was designed to determine whether memory for stimulus values is a Bayesian weighting of the magnitude of a stimulus and the central tendency of an exemplar's category (Huttenlocher, Hedges, & Vevea, 2000). In five experiments, participants reproduced the remembered size of a geometric figure drawn from one of two categories whose means for size differed. Reproductions were biased toward the mean of the combined distribution rather than the mean of either category. Reproductions were also influenced by the size of the stimulus on the preceding trial. Neither of these results is entirely consistent with the view that recollections are partially constructed from a consideration of the long-run probabilities established by category membership.