AUTHOR=Lange Nicholas D., Thomas Rick P., Davelaar Eddy J. TITLE=Temporal Dynamics of Hypothesis Generation: The Influences of Data Serial Order, Data Consistency, and Elicitation Timing JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology VOLUME=3 YEAR=2012 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00215 DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00215 ISSN=1664-1078 ABSTRACT=

The pre-decisional process of hypothesis generation is a ubiquitous cognitive faculty that we continually employ in an effort to understand our environment and thereby support appropriate judgments and decisions. Although we are beginning to understand the fundamental processes underlying hypothesis generation, little is known about how various temporal dynamics, inherent in real world generation tasks, influence the retrieval of hypotheses from long-term memory. This paper presents two experiments investigating three data acquisition dynamics in a simulated medical diagnosis task. The results indicate that the mere serial order of data, data consistency (with previously generated hypotheses), and mode of responding influence the hypothesis generation process. An extension of the HyGene computational model endowed with dynamic data acquisition processes is forwarded and explored to provide an account of the present data.