Ecological and evolutionary validity: comments on Johnson-Laird, Legrenzi, Girotto, Legrenzi, and Caverni's (1999) mental-model theory of extensional reasoning

Abstract

The mental-model account of naive probabilistic reasoning by P. N. Johnson-Laird, P. Legrenzi, V. Girotto, M. S. Legrenzi, and J.-P. Caverni (1999) provides an opportunity to clarify several similarities and differences between it and ecological rationality (frequentist) accounts. First, ambiguities in the meaning of Bayesian reasoning can lead to disagreements and inappropriate arguments. Second, 2 conflated effects of using natural frequencies are noticed but not actually tested separately because of an artificial dissociation of frequency representations and natural sampling. Third, similarities are noted between the subset principle and the principle of natural sampling. Finally, some potentially misleading portrayals of the role of evolutionary factors in psychology are corrected. Mental-model theory, rather than better explaining probabilistic reasoning, may be able to use frequency representations as a key element in clarifying its own ambiguous constructs.