ABSTRACT
Theorists who resist interpreting the gap between normative and descriptive models as indicating human irrationality have one more strategy available in addition to those previously described. In the context of empirical cognitive psychology, it is a commonplace argument, but it is one that continues to create enormous controversy and to bedevil efforts to compare human performance to normative standards. It is the argument that although the experimenter may well be applying the correct normative model to the problem as set, the subject might be construing the problem differently and be providing the normatively appropriate answer to a different problem-in short, that subjects have a different interpretation of the task (see, e.g., Adrer, 1984, 1991; Broome, 1990; Henle, 1962; Hilton, 1995; Levinson, 1995; Margolis, 1987; Schick, 1987, 1997; Schwarz, 1996).
