Processes models, environmental analyses, and cognitive architectures: Quo vadis quantum probability theory?

A lot of research in cognition and decision making suffers from a lack of formalism. The quantum probability program could help to improve this situation, but we wonder whether it would provide even more added value if its presumed focus on outcome models were complemented by process models that are, ideally, informed by ecological analyses and integrated into cognitive architecture

Chapter 18 The winds of change

The ongoing process of digitalization seems to be changing our world dramatically. While many of these changes might lead to improvements for human well-being, others might entail profoundly disastrous consequences both for individuals and for societies as a whole. One research program that might be particularly suitable for studying environmental changes is the fast-and-frugal heuristics framework. This theoretical framework adopts an ecological perspective on human behavior, cognition, and performance. In an uncertain world, humans, so the argument goes, can adaptively respond to environmental demands by relying on a repertoire of simple decision strategies, called heuristics. Selecting heuristics that fit the environment results in adaptive behavior. This chapter focuses on the possible negative aspects of digitalization to discuss how the science of heuristic decision making under uncertainty might aid reflection on how individuals navigate their way through sudden, disruptive, and thorough environmental changes. Specifically, it sketches out what aversive future digital environments might look like, and which heuristics individuals and societies might rely upon in order to manage those aversive environments. The chapter concludes by (1) pointing to a series of research questions about how digital environments might differ from other environments that we humans have encountered both in our more recent history and over the course of our evolution, as well as (2) turning to questions about children and education

Five principles for studying people's use of heuristics

Abstract: The fast and frugal heuristics framework assumes that people rely on an adaptive toolbox of simple decision strategies—called heuristics—to make inferences, choices, estimations, and other decisions. Each of these heuristics is tuned to regularities in the structure of the task environment and each is capable of exploiting the ways in which basic cognitive capacities work. In doing so, heuristics enable adaptive behavior. In this article, we give an overview of the framework and formulate five principles that should guide the study of people’s adaptive toolbox. We emphasize that models of heuristics should be (i) precisely defined; (ii) tested comparatively; (iii) studied in line with theories of strategy selection; (iv) evaluated by how well they predict new data; and (vi) tested in the real world in addition to the laboratory. Key words: fast and frugal heuristics; experimental design; model testing As we write this article, international financial markets are in turmoil. Large banks are going bankrupt almost daily. It is a difficult situation for financial decision makers — regardless of whether they are lay investors trying to make small-scale profits here and there or professionals employed by the finance industry. To safeguard their investments, these decision makers need to be able to foresee uncertain future economic developments, such as which investments are likely to be the safest and which companies are likely to crash next. In times of rapid waves of potentially devastating financial crashes, these informed bets must often be made quickly, with little time for extensive information search or computationally demanding calculations of likely future returns. Lay stock traders in particular have to trust the contents of their memories, relying on incomplete, imperfec

Modeling and Aiding Intuition: Introduction to the Commentary Section

This section of JARMAC includes a series of commentaries on articles published in the September, 2015, special issue of JARMAC: "Modeling and aiding intuition in organizational decision making" (Marewski & Hoffrage, 2015). The commentaries focus on research programs such as naturalistic decision making, heuristics-and-biases, ACT-R, and CLARION. They feature topics ranging from evolution to decision styles. In this introduction, we provide a brief overview of those contributions, alongside with concluding words on this project of pulling together multiple and very different strands of research on intuition

External validity and anchoring heuristics: application of DUNDRUM-1 to secure service gatekeeping in South Wales

Background: Structured clinical judgement tools provide scope for the standardisation of forensic service gatekeeping. These same tools may also allow identification of heuristics in this important decision process. Method: Retrospective assessments using the DUNDRUM-1 triage tool were completed for 121 service users referred for the first time for possible forensic psychiatric admission in South Wales. Fifty cases were admitted to medium security, 49 were admitted to low security and 22 remained in open conditions. Results: DUNDRUM-1 total scores differed appropriately between different levels of security but only 5 of the 11 DUNDRUM-1 items differed between the groups. Regression revealed a decision process anchored on the ‘legal process’ and ‘immediacy of risk due to mental disorder’ items of the DUNDRUM-1 with between 86% and 98% of variability in service user placement explained. Conclusions: Service user placement was broadly aligned with DUNDRUM-1 recommendations. However not all triage items informed gatekeeping decisions and a heuristic anchoring process emerged. It remains to be seen whether decisions anchored in this way are effective or ineffective in this context