Learning By Not Doing: An Experimental Investigation of Observational Learning

In this paper we present experimental evidence suggesting that observational learning (i.e. learning-by-not-doing but by observing) may outperform learning-by-doing.LEARNING

Learning By Not Doing: An Experimental Investigation of Observational Learning

In this paper we present experimental evidence suggesting that observational learning (i.e. learning-by-not-doing but by observing) may outperform learning-by-doing.LEARNING

Creating Culture in the Lab: Equilibrium Conventions in Inter-Generational Ultimatum Games

The Ultimatum Game and the experiments surrounding it, have presented economists with a puzzle that they have struggled to explain. But as Robert Aumann has pointed out, while there may be only one sub-game perfect equilibrium to the Ultimatum Game, there are an infinite number of Nash equilibria. All that is needed to maintain a non-sub-game perfect equilibrium is a set of Sender beliefs that the offer contemplated is the minimum that would be accepted and behavior on the part of the Receivers that confirms these beliefs. The only puzzle is how such a set of mutually consistent beliefs developed in the first place and how they are passed on from one generation of player to the next. Using an inter-generational game experimental setting, this paper investigates how "culture" serves as the selection mechanism which solves this puzzle. Culture is then simply a system of beliefs and self-confirming actions which support any one of these non-sub-game perfect Nash equilibria as the accepted solution to the game being played. The outcome is, as Robert Aumann has called it a "perfectly good" Nash equilibrium convention which is just not perfect.

Social Learning and Coordination Conventions in Inter-Generational Games: An Experimental Study

This is a paper on the creation and evolution of conventions of behavior in "inter-generational games". In these games a sequence of nonoverlapping "generations" of players play a stage game for a finite number of periods and are then replaced by other agents who continue the game in their role for an identical length of time. Players in generation t are allowed to see the history of the game played by all (or some subset) of the generations who played it before them and can communicate with their successors in generation t+1 and advise them on how they should behave. What we find is that word-of-mouth social learning (in the form of advice from laboratory "parents" to laboratory "children") can be a strong force in the creation of social conventions, far stronger than the type of learning subjects seem capable of doing simply by learning the lessons of history without the guidance o¥ered by such advice.

Workaholics and Drop Outs in Optimal Organizations

JEL classifications: C92; D44; J31; D72; D82;organizations;all-pay auctions;prices;contests;experiments

Worker Trust, System Vulnerability, and the Performance of Work Groups.

What we find is that teh match between vulnerability and trust is a key ingredient into what makes a group of workers work well together along with the type of coordination problem that is created by the equilibrium of the incentive scheme.GAME THEORY

A Practica Person's Guide to Mechanism Selection: Some Lessons from Experimental Economics

economic theory

Are Eye Movements and EEG on the Same Page?: A Coregistration Study on Parafoveal Preview and Lexical Frequency

published Online: September 15, 2022Readers extract visual and linguistic information not only from fixated words but also upcoming parafoveal words to introduce new input efficiently into the language processing pipeline. The lexical frequency of upcoming words and similarity with subsequent foveal information both influence the amount of time people spend once they fixate the word foveally. However, it is unclear from eye movements alone the extent to which parafoveal word processing, and the integration of that word with foveally obtained information, continues after saccade plans have been initiated. To investigate the underlying neural processes involved in word recognition after saccade planning, we coregistered electroencephalogram (EEG) and eye movements during a gaze-contingent display change paradigm. We orthogonally manipulated the frequency of the parafoveal and foveal words and measured fixation related potentials (FRPs) upon foveal fixation. Eye movements showed primarily an effect of preview frequency, suggesting that saccade planning is based on the familiarity of the parafoveal input. FRPs, on the other hand, demonstrated a disruption in downstream processing when parafoveal and foveal input differed, but only when the parafoveal word was high frequency. These findings demonstrate that lexical processing continues after the eyes have moved away from a word and that eye movements and FRPs provide distinct but complementary accounts about oculomotor behavior and neural processing that cannot be obtained from either method in isolation. Furthermore, these findings put constraints on models of reading by suggesting that lexical processes that occur before an eye movement program is initiated are qualitatively different from those that occur afterward.This study was partially funded by the Spanish government (FPIMINECO Predoctoral Grant BES-2017-081797) and the society of Spanish scientists in United States (ECUSA; Fostering Grads mentorship program). Data from this study have been presented at the 2021 Psychonomic Society Annual Meeting and a departmental colloquium in the Department of Psychology at the University of South Florida. The data that support the findings of this study, the full sentence stimuli, and the code used for analyses, are available at https://osf.io/jkhvw/

A Surprise-Quiz View of Learning in Economic Experiments

Education, training, time series, experimentation