Retrieval and comparison processes in part--whole decisions

Undergraduate students were presented with word pairs (e.g., egg-yolk) and were timed as they decided whether one word named part of the thing named by the other word. In Experiment 1, "no" responses to nonpart pairs (e.g., fish-flaps) were slowed by the similarity of the stimulus part (flaps) to a part that the stimulus object did possess (fins). This suggested that decisions were made by retrieving parts of the stimulus object from memory and comparing them to the stimulus part. Whereas the parts used as stimuli in Experiment 1 were nonspecific, belonging to several different types of object (e.g., wheel), those selected for Experiment 2 were specific to a single type of object (e.g., thumb). In Experiment 2, "no" responses to nonpart pairs (e.g., foot-thumb) were slowed by similarity of the stimulus object (foot) to an object that the stimulus part (thumb) belonged to (hand). This suggested that decisions were made by retrieving the object to which the stimulus part belonged and comparing it to the stimulus object. The results support a hybrid model of part-whole decisions that includes directed retrieval of relational knowledge from memory and a comparison process.     

Visual comparison processes: Identity and similarity decisions

In the first experiment, in which two successively presented free-form visual patterns varied in their similarity to each other, subjects had to decide, in one condition, if the patterns were “identical” and in two other conditions if the patterns were “similar.” Qualitative individual differences in the effect of similarity on the time required to make a decision were found in the “identity” condition, and these differences interacted with the “similarity” conditions. The individual differences and the experimental effects are interpreted in terms of a two-process model of the visual comparison process—a holistic matching process that is sometimes accompanied by an analytic difference detection process. In the second experiment, the same subjects repeatedly categorized subsets of the free-form visual patterns on the basis of similarity. There appeared to be no individual differences in the subjects’ perceptions of similarity, but subjects’ perceptions did differ from the assumptions made by the experimenters when they established the response criteria for the first experiment.     

Verbal fluency and verbal comprehension abilities in synonym tasks

Generating different synonym candidates and evaluating these candidates with respect to their synonymy with the stimulus word are two components of solving an open synonym task, which requires giving synonyms for a given word (cf. Janssen, Hoskens, & De Boeck, 1993). Separate subtasks were designed to identify these components. It is shown in this study that the generation component ability is primarily related to verbal fluency abilities, whereas the evaluation component ability is primarily related to verbal comprehension abilities. Moreover, evidence is given that these two component abilities can account for the correlations of the open synonym task with other ability measures.     

A constrained optimization model of risky decisions

A decision model is formulated for individual choices between gambles whose probabilities and payoffs are explicitly stated. The decision situation is characterized as R_N = (X, P, Z, T, α) where X is a payoff matrix, P is the objective probability distribution over the states of nature, Z is a class of objective functions, T is tolerable regret and 1 ? α is the maximum probability for accepting regrets greater than T. Given R_N, the problem of selecting a strategy is the solution of a chance constrained optimization problem. The solutions for choice situations having two alternatives and n states of nature are developed in a series of theorems. Some implications for experimentation and possible applications are discussed.     

A comparison of six methods for assessing the importance of perceived consequences in behavioral decisions: Applications from attitude research

Six different approaches to measuring the importance of perceived consequences in behavioral decisions were compared: (1) an elicitation approach, (2) a subjective probability model, (3) Jacoby's behavioral process technology, (4) a Bayesian model, (5) a direct rating approach, and (6) a correlational approach. The convergence among the methods was evaluated for two different decision topics: (1) emphasizing a career relative to marriage, and (2) use of birth control pills. Results indicated that the six approaches yielded estimates of importance that were, by and large, unrelated to each other.     

A behavioral account of compensation awarding decisions

Suppose an individual loses an irreplaceable object and someone else is at fault. How much should he be compensated? Normatively, compensation should equal the value (utility) to the victim. Our experiments demonstrate that compensation decisions often ignore value and are instead based on cost (how much the victim originally paid for the item) except when cost is zero. For example, we found that people awarded $200 for a destroyed item worth $500 to the victim if the cost was $200; however, they awarded $500 if the original cost was zero. We explain these phenomena in terms of lay scientism (the tendency to base decisions on objective factors) and discuss how the prevalent cost‐based compensation rule hurts consumer welfare. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Semantic activation due to synonym, antonym, and rhyme production

Semantic activation due to priming, and the time course of its dissipation, were examined. Following a word presentation, the subject performed one of three tasks: synonym, antonym, or rhyme production. The first presentation of a word together with the task was the primer. The second presentation of the same word occurred after 0 to 4 intervening words. Effects of priming were looked for in the speed of the first response to the second presentation of the word. A production facilitation occurred when synonym production was primed by antonym production to the same word, the primed word immediately following the primer. Facilitation decreased with increasing number of interpolated tasks. No effect was found when antonym production was primed by synonym production to the same word. The results are discussed in terms of spreading-activation due to active use of the associative link between the concept and its antonyms.     

BALDEY: A database of auditory lexical decisions

In an auditory lexical decision experiment, 5541 spoken content words and pseudowords were presented to 20 native speakers of Dutch. The words vary in phonological make-up and in number of syllables and stress pattern, and are further representative of the native Dutch vocabulary in that most are morphologically complex, comprising two stems or one stem plus derivational and inflectional suffixes, with inflections representing both regular and irregular paradigms; the pseudowords were matched in these respects to the real words. The BALDEY (“biggest auditory lexical decision experiment yet”) data file includes response times and accuracy rates, with for each item morphological information plus phonological and acoustic information derived from automatic phonemic segmentation of the stimuli. Two initial analyses illustrate how this data set can be used. First, we discuss several measures of the point at which a word has no further neighbours and compare the degree to which each measure predicts our lexical decision response outcomes. Second, we investigate how well four different measures of frequency of occurrence (from written corpora, spoken corpora, subtitles, and frequency ratings by 75 participants) predict the same outcomes. These analyses motivate general conclusions about the auditory lexical decision task. The (publicly available) BALDEY database lends itself to many further analyses.     

A closer look at decisions to quit

Aspects of March and Simon’s (1958) subjective expected utility model and a prediction of Lee and Mitchell’s (1994) unfolding model of voluntary employee turnover were tested. A policy capturing simulation that varied high, moderate, and low levels of five job characteristics was used to model voluntary turnover decision processes for 532 nurses. Survey measures of these job characteristics obtained over the next 2 years were multiplied by weights derived from nurse simulations to yield turnover likelihood estimates. These estimates exhibited 80%, 127%, and 190% more predictive power (depending on turnover operationalization) than post-employment survey estimates of turnover intention, job satisfaction, and job availability. Groups of nurses with homogeneous voluntary turnover decision models were also identified, though no groups with homogeneous job perceptions were observed. Evidence suggested nurses responded to “shocks” as predicted. March and Simon’s model of voluntary turnover was supported and implications drawn for managing voluntary nursing turnover.     

Surreal decisions

Although expected utility theory has proven a fruitful and elegant theory in the finite realm, attempts to generalize it to infinite values have resulted in many paradoxes. In this paper, we argue that the use of John Conway's surreal numbers shall provide a firm mathematical foundation for transfinite decision theory. To that end, we prove a surreal representation theorem and show that our surreal decision theory respects dominance reasoning even in the case of infinite values. We then bring our theory to bear on one of the more venerable decision problems in the literature: Pascal's Wager. Analyzing the wager showcases our theory's virtues and advantages. To that end, we analyze two objections against the wager: Mixed Strategies and Many Gods. After formulating the two objections in the framework of surreal utilities and probabilities, our theory correctly predicts that (1) the pure Pascalian strategy beats all mixed strategies, and (2) what one should do in a Pascalian decision problem depends on what one's credence function is like. Our analysis therefore suggests that although Pascal's Wager is mathematically coherent, it does not deliver what it purports to, a rationally compelling argument that people should lead a religious life regardless of how confident they are in theism and its alternatives.     

A multidimensional framework for financial–economic decisions

Most financial–economic decisions are made consciously, with a clear and constant drive to ‘good’, ‘better’ or even ‘optimal’ decisions. Nevertheless, many decisions in practice do not earn these qualifications, despite the availability of financial economic theory, decision sciences and ample resources. We plea for the development of a multidimensional framework to support financial economic decision processes. Our aim is to achieve a better integration of available theory and decision technologies. We sketch (a) what the framework should look like, (b) what elements of the framework already exist and which not, and (c) how the MCDA community can co‐operate in its development. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A reinforcement learning diffusion decision model for value-based decisions

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review - Psychological models of value-based decision-making describe how subjective values are formed and mapped to single choices. Recently, additional efforts have...     

A non-linear multi-criteria model for strategic fms selection decisions

The strategic decision of selecting an optimal flexible manufacturing system (FMS) configuration is a complicated question which involves evaluating trade-offs between a number of different, potentially conflicting criteria such as annual production volume, flexibility, production and investment costs and average throughput of the system. Recently, several structured multicriteria approaches have been proposed to aid management in the FMS selection process. While acknowledging the non-linear nature of a number of the relationships in the model, notably between batch size and the number of batches produced of each part, these studies used linear simplifications to illustrate the decision dynamics of the problem. These linear models were shown to offer useful analytical tools in the FMS pre-design process. Owing to the non-linearities of the true relationships, however, the trade-offs between the criteria could not fully be explored within the linear framework. This paper builds on the two-phase decision support framework proposed by Stam and Kuula (1991) and uses a modified non-linear multi-criteria formulation to solve the problem. The software used in the illustration can easily be implemented, is user-interactive and menu-driven. The methodology is applied to real data from a Finnish metal product company and the results are compared with those obtained in previous studies.