1,720,977 research outputs found
Implicit emotional biases in decision making: The case of the Gambling Task.
No full textMany authors have endorsed the hypothesis that previous emotional experiences may exert a covert influence on behavior, but some
findings and replications of the original studies challenged this view. We investigated this topic by carrying out an experiment with the
Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), where a dissociation procedure was adopted to successfully isolate possible implicit components. After a
typical interaction with the IGT, participants performed a ‘‘blind’’ card selection phase without receiving any feedback. Half of them
were instructed to continue choosing as they did before, the other half was told that good card decks turned bad, and vice versa, so that
explicit knowledge was necessary to overcome the previously learned deck-outcome associations. The results confirmed the existence of
early acquired implicit biases, confirming that previously experienced emotional events may covertly affect subsequent behavior
Mentalizing in games: A subtractive behavioral study of Prisoner's Dilemma
No full textEconomists and neuroscientists often explain game playing by
assuming that humans try to predict the opponent's behavior
on the basis of her past choices. We try to question this
assumption in a Prisoner's Dilemma Game by using a
methodology which we call the “subtractive behavioral
method”. Our aim is to investigate which task features make
participants attend to the opponent's behavior or, on the
contrary, make them take into account only their own choices
and received payoffs. We find a critical effect of contextual
information and we derive some suggestions about the
methodology of brain imaging and behavioral game theory
experiments
Membership vs Typicality in Sentence Verification Tasks: Implications for the Fuzzy Set Theory of Concepts
Full text linkConcept membership vs typicality in sentence verification tasks
Full text linkIn the paper we discuss the relation between fuzzy sets and the graded membership and typicality effects found in the study of concepts. After a short overview of the topic, we present three experiments, carried out using the same method but with different situational contexts, which examine whether graded membership and typicality could be considered as independent factors capable of influencing the performance of human participants involved in sentence verification tasks, or they are somehow interrelated. The paper concludes with a general discussion of the experimental findings and the problems they pose for models of concepts based on the theory fuzzy sets
Applying Occam’s razor to paper(and rock and scissors, too): Why simpler models are sometimes better.
No full textA commonly held idea is that people engaged in guessing
tasks try to detect sequential dependencies between the
occurring events and behave accordingly. For instance,
previous accounts of the popular Rock Paper Scissors game
assume that people try to anticipate the move an opponent is
likely to make and play a move capable of beating it. In the
paper we propose that players modulate their behavior by
reacting to the effects it produces on the environment, i.e.,
that they behave exactly as they do in non competitive
situations. We present an experiment in which participants
play against a computer controlled by different algorithms and
develop a procedural model, based on the new ACT-R utility
learning mechanism, that is able to replicate the participants'
behavior in all the experimental conditions
Theories of Concepts and Contradiction Acceptance
Full text linkThe paper discusses the Heterogeneity Hypothesis about concepts (Machery, 2009) and the empirical support on which it is based. Two experiments are presented which investigate one of the main predictions of the theory, i.e., the fact that people should be willing to accept apparently contradictory sentences about the same entit
Rewards and punishments in iterated decision making:An explanation for thefrequency of thecontingent event effect
No full textIterated decision making can be studied in laboratory using situations, like the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), in which participants face repeatedly the same decision problem getting feedback after each choice. In the paper we focus on a recurring
finding in experiments carried out with the IGT, the frequency
of the contingent event effect—i.e., the fact that people consistently
prefer options associated with rare losses, independently
of their attractiveness, expected value and loss magnitude—
that has not yet received a satisfactory explanation. An experiment reveals that the effect relies on simply experiencing
rewards and punishments, not being influenced by the net outcome (loss or win) to which they are associated, and a computational model, implemented in the ACT-R cognitive architecture,
corroborates the idea that punishments and losses on one
hand, and rewards and wins on the other, play the same functional
role in determining the participants’ behavior in IGT
The cognitive modeling of human behavior: Why a model is (sometimes) better than 10,000 words
No full textThis special issue of Cognitive Systems Research presents
a collection of remarkable papers on cognitive modeling
based on Communications delivered at ICCM-2006, thè
Seventh International Conference on Cognitive Modeling
(Fum, Del Missier, & Stocco, 2006) held in Trieste, Italy,
from Aprii 5th to 8th, 2006. Being thè organizers and chairmen
of thè conference, we have been invited to serve as
guest editors for this issue. We therefore solicited some participants
to reexamine their contributions, and to change
them in form of Journal articles. In particular, we asked
authors to review what they had presented during thè conference
focusing on thè benefits cognitive modeling could
provide to cognitive science. The issue you are reading is
thè result of this editorial process.
In this introductory commentary we would like to set
thè stage for what follows by illustrating thè advantages
and disadvantages of cognitive modeling, and by presenting
a minimal set of requirements for a good modeling
practice. Then, we will briefly preview thè papers composing
this special issue, and we will emphasize how they deal
with thè issues discussed in thè previous sections
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