Two explanations of sensitivity to categorical frequency—automatic processing (Hasher & Zacks,1979) and the availability heuristic (Tversky & Kahneman, 1973)—were investigated in two experi-ments. Sensitivity to category frequency was affected by instructions (Experiment I). Varying re-trieval time did not affect frequency sensitivity (Experiment 1), but manipulating encoding time did(Experiment 2). Differences in item recallability tend to support the availability heuristic hypothesisover the hypothesis of automatic processing.
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Williams et al. (1986) studied this question.
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