Decision Making

1. Decision Making

2. Features and Classes of Decision Making • Decisions typically represent a “many-to-one” mapping of information to responses. • The complexity of the choices can be varied • go – no go • multiple choice response

3. Features of Decision Making: Uncertainty • Uncertainty of the consequences. • A result of the probabilistic nature of the world – in which choices will lead to outcomes. • Always an element of “risk”

4. Features of Decision Making: Familiarity and Expertise • Decision making between “Experts” and “Novices” • Levels of Experience and Training • Remember – experience might affect the speed at which a decision is made – not necessarily whether it was a good one or not.

5. Features of Decision Making: Time • Time plays at least two important roles in influencing the decision making process: • One shot decision vs an evolving decision • Purchasing an object • Time Pressure – element forcing time-lines of a decision • Defusing a bomb!

6. Classes of Decision Making • Cognitive or Information Processing • Limitations in human attention, working memory, strategy, heuristics – work well together most times • Naturalistic Decision Making • How people make decisions outside the laboratory environment • Aspects of expertise, complexity

8. Characteristics ofDecision Making 1. Expected Value • The optimum decision would produce the maximum value if repeated numerous times. • Often the “value” is not universally agreed upon (personal worth or experience) • Is the value minimizing the expected loss or maximizing the expected gain

9. Characteristics ofDecision Making 2. Good decisions produce good outcomes • Sometimes it is only hindsight that let’s us know whether the decision produced the desirable results

10. Characteristics ofDecision Making 3. Good decisions are made by “experts” • Sometimes novices can make better decisions – an “expert” decided to go on the Challenger launch.

11. Evidence Accumulation • Cue Diagnosticity • How much evidence a cue offers • See rain drops you know it is raining • Dark clouds on the horizon – maybe it will rain • Cue Reliability or Credibility • The likelihood a physical cue can be believed • Peter and the Wolf • Physical Features of the Cue • Is it conspicuous • How much perceptual attention does it attain

13. Attention and Cue Integration • Information Cues are MISSING • Not enough information on hand to make an accurate decision • Cues are Numerous: Information Overload • Less than perfect information value • Lack of expertise • Cues are Differentially Salient • Attention-attracting properties and subsequent meaning • Processed Cues are Not Differentially Weighted • Modulate the amount of weight given to a cue

14. Belief Changes Over Time • Overconfidence Bias • The decision to seek more information before making a decision (decision within a decision) occurs with levels of uncertainty. However, research indicates that people are overconfident in their state-of-knowledge or bias. • Prematurely close the search for evidence. • Anchoring Heuristic • Humans have a tendency to bias beliefs in favour of the initially chosen hypothesis – mental anchor – fixed paradigm. • The Confirmation Bias • A tendency for people to seek information and cues that CONFIRM the tentatively held hypothesis or belief.

15. Stress • STRESS and ERRORS are linked in a closed loop system… • When errors are made (and we become aware of them) stress occurs; and when stress is present, errors occur.

16. * An experience whose essence is arrived through the analysis of living experience in disregard of scientific knowledge; something known through sense perception rather than by thought or intuition. * External Internal

17. Stress Component Effect • One of the best ways of integrating the effects of stress on performance is to consider their influence on the information processing component. • Recall, what are some of the processing components: • Selective Attention • Working Memory • Response Choice • Dependence of task on particular components

19. Can use physiological responses as an “indirect” measure of stress Arousal Stressors can mediate the sympathetic nervous system

20. Selective Attention: Narrowing • As discussed, changes in human selective and focused attention mediate many stress effects. • One of the most important and robust appears to be an increased selectivity or “attentional narrowing” that results from a wide variety of different stressors. • Tunneling is not simply defined by a reduction of the spatial area of the attention spotlight but can be caused by a filtering effect from operator priority. • Sometime this narrowing can improve performance, but often degrades response as only central tasks are attended to and peripheral events can be ignored.

21. Selective Attention: Distraction • Many stressors impose a distraction and this divert selective attention away from task-relevant processing. • Loud or intermittent noises will serve as a source of distraction.

22. Working-Memory Loss • Noise, danger, anxiety will all degrade working-memory capacity. • There is a disruption of the “inner speech” necessary to carry out rehearsal. • These effects of these cues are then degraded as well. • Will effect how new experiences are “encoded” into long-term memory.

23. Yerkes Dodson Law

24. Perseveration • High levels of stress will cause people to persevere or continue with a given action or plan. • This leads to trying to repeat the unsuccessful solution (the very failure which might be creating the stress on the operator). • Familiar behaviour is little hampered but more novel behaviour becomes disrupted.

25. Strategic Control • Recruitment of More Resources • “try harder” • Risks are increased fatigue then subsequent problems • Remove the Stressor • Turn off the alarms • Eliminate the “time pressure” • Change the Goals of the Task • Are multiple options available • Do Nothing • Do nothing to adjust their processing strategy allowing the stress effects to influence the performance in a more predictable manner.

26. Categories of Human Error

27. Mistakes • Knowledge-based mistakes • Incorrect plans of action are arrived at because of a failure to understand the situation. • Biases and Cognitive Limits • Level of Expertise • Rule-based mistakes • Occur when operators are somewhat more sure of their ground so they invoke a rule (if-then logic). • Good rule is misapplied • Choice of rule is guided by frequency and reinforcement • Compared to knowledge-based mistakes, rule-based mistakes are performed with much more confidence

28. Slips • In contrast to mistakes, in which the intended action is wrong, slips are errors in which the right intention is INCORRECTLY carried out. • Pouring orange juice on your cereal instead of milk because you were busy reading the paper.

29. Lapses • Represents the failure to carry out any action at all. • Forgetfulness • Omission to carry out all the steps due to some interruption during routine.

30. Mode Errors • When a particular action that is highly appropriate in one mode of operation is performed in a different, inappropriate mode because the operator has not correctly remembered the appropriate context. • Generally a consequence of highly automated performance or of high workload. • Thinking you are in a reverse gear when you are in a forward gear and then stepping on the accelerator.