How often did I do it? Experienced ease of retrieval and frequency estimates of past behavior

The present research investigates the role of experienced ease of retrieval in frequency estimates of personally performed past behavior. Based on the logic that it is more difficult to remember more than a few different personal instances of past bicycle use, we speculated that the experienced ease (or difficulty) associated with this task rather than the content of recall guides subsequent frequency estimates of past bicycle use. Furthermore, to test whether the possible influence of the experienced ease of recall can be attenuated, we investigated the effects of the number of recalled examples on the frequency estimates under low and high accuracy motivation conditions. Results of two experiments showed that participants' frequency estimates were lower after they had generated 8 rather than 3 examples. However, this effect did not emerge when participants were motivated to be accurate in their estimates. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V, All rights reserved. PsycINFO classification. 2340; 2343.