I tend to think of the availability bias more in the sense that our thoughts and actions are constrained by the familiar or by individual examples. When our awareness of some particular thing is raised, we tend to view that thing as more important or more probable, even though this isn’t necessarily justified in the modern world. One example would be the Columbine shooting; while there was no change in technical feasibility (if anything, it got harder), school shootings became much more common, likely in part because people realized, “Hey, I could do that!” Or when someone quits smoking because a relative gets lung cancer—they already knew there was a risk, but now that they know what lung cancer is, they actually realize they should do something. Other (hypothetical) examples abound.
Estimating letter position in one’s native language does seem like a very limited application of this heuristic; also, in the case of the 5-letter study, adding additional letters may improve judgement, since while you’re thinking of all those other letters, you think of words with some of the letters in the third position. Or, you just think, “Probably about half are first letters and half are third letters; these five seem more like first letters, so the rest are probably third letters.” But the availability heuristic really seems to extend well beyond this limited application, so arguing its non-existence through this evidence is unconvincing, at least for me. As one can see from the wikipedia article, there’s a bit more evidence for it than just letter-position studies.
As I replied to cousin_it below (and have now edited to the article), yes, this certainly doesn’t mean that the availability heuristic would be nonexistent.
I tend to think of the availability bias more in the sense that our thoughts and actions are constrained by the familiar or by individual examples. When our awareness of some particular thing is raised, we tend to view that thing as more important or more probable, even though this isn’t necessarily justified in the modern world. One example would be the Columbine shooting; while there was no change in technical feasibility (if anything, it got harder), school shootings became much more common, likely in part because people realized, “Hey, I could do that!” Or when someone quits smoking because a relative gets lung cancer—they already knew there was a risk, but now that they know what lung cancer is, they actually realize they should do something. Other (hypothetical) examples abound.
Estimating letter position in one’s native language does seem like a very limited application of this heuristic; also, in the case of the 5-letter study, adding additional letters may improve judgement, since while you’re thinking of all those other letters, you think of words with some of the letters in the third position. Or, you just think, “Probably about half are first letters and half are third letters; these five seem more like first letters, so the rest are probably third letters.” But the availability heuristic really seems to extend well beyond this limited application, so arguing its non-existence through this evidence is unconvincing, at least for me. As one can see from the wikipedia article, there’s a bit more evidence for it than just letter-position studies.
As I replied to cousin_it below (and have now edited to the article), yes, this certainly doesn’t mean that the availability heuristic would be nonexistent.