Editing Availability heuristic (section)

=== Alternative explanations ===
Much of the criticism against the availability heuristic has claimed that making use of the content that becomes available in our mind is not based on the ease of recall as suggested by Schwarz et al.<ref name="schwarz" />  For example, it could be argued that recalling more words that begin with K than words with the third letter being K could arise from how we categorize and process words into our memory.  If we categorize words by the first letter and recall them through the same process, this would show more support for the representative heuristic than the availability heuristic.  Based on the possibility of explanations such as these, some researchers have claimed that the classic studies on the availability heuristic are too vague in that they fail to account for people's underlying mental processes.  Indeed, a study conducted by Wanke et al. demonstrated this scenario can occur in situations used to test the availability heuristic.<ref name="wanke">{{Cite journal |last1=Wänke |first1=Michaela |last2=Schwarz |first2=Norbert |last3=Bless |first3=Herbert |year=1995 |title=The availability heuristic revisited: Experienced ease of retrieval in mundane frequency estimates |journal=Acta Psychologica |volume=89 |issue=1 |pages=83–90 |doi=10.1016/0001-6918(93)E0072-A |issn=0001-6918}}</ref>

A second line of study has shown that frequency estimation may not be the only strategy we use when making frequency judgments.  A recent line of research has shown that our situational working memory can access long-term memories, and this memory retrieval process includes the ability to determine more accurate probabilities.<ref name="HulmeRoodenrys1995">{{Cite journal |last1=Hulme |first1=Charles |last2=Roodenrys |first2=Steven |last3=Brown |first3=Gordon |last4=Mercer |first4=Robin |year=1995 |title=The role of long-term memory mechanisms in memory span |journal=British Journal of Psychology |volume=86 |issue=4 |pages=527–536 |doi=10.1111/j.2044-8295.1995.tb02570.x |issn=0007-1269}}</ref>