Missing the best opportunity; who can seize the next one? Agents show less inaction inertia than personal decision makers

Inaction inertia is a prevalent consumer decision bias, whereby missing a superior opportunity decreases the likelihood of acting on a subsequent opportunity in the same domain. We assume that a cognitive focus accounts for the inaction inertia effect. Individuals focus more on losses (the association between the current opportunity and missed opportunity) than gains (the association between the current opportunity and original states), therefore showing the inaction inertia effect. We also propose a self–other difference in inaction inertia: agents exhibit less inaction inertia than personal decision makers as they focus more on gains than losses compared to personal decision makers. In Study 1, agents were less trapped in inaction inertia than personal decision makers. Cognitive focus was measured with eye-tracking techniques in Study 2 and a self-reported item in Study 3. Agents were observed as focusing less on losses than gains compared to personal decision makers. This cognitive focus difference explained the self–other difference in inaction inertia. In Study 4, both types of decision makers were less susceptible to inaction inertia when focusing on gains than losses.     

Social creativity as a function of agent cognition and network properties: A computer model

Inventions – concepts, devices, procedures – are often created by networks of interacting agents in which the agents can be individuals (as in a scientific discipline) or they can themselves be collectives (as in firms interacting in a market). Different collectives create and invent at different rates. It is plausible that the rate of invention is jointly determined by properties of the agents (e.g., their cognitive capacity) and by properties of the network of interactions (e.g., the density of the communication links), but little is known about such two-level interactions. We present an agent-based model of social creativity in which the individual agent captures key features of the human cognitive architecture derived from cognitive psychology, and the interactions are modeled by agents exchanging partial results of their symbolic processing of task information. We investigated the effect of agent and network properties on rates of invention and diffusion in the network via systematic parameter variations. Simulation runs show, among other results, that (a) the simulation exhibits network effects, i.e., the model captures the beneficial effect of collaboration; (b) the density of connections produces diminishing returns in term of the benefits on the invention rate; and (c) limits on the cognitive capacity of the individual agents have the counterintuitive consequence of focusing their efforts. Limitations and relations to other computer simulation models of creative collectives are discussed.     

认知风格管理决策影响的实验研究

本研究通过实验室实验,探索了企业管理者的认知风格对决策的影响。研究结果表明,认知风格的不同会导致企业管理者决策方案选择的差异。     

从认知到实践——哲学史视域中马克思"完全彻底的"人本主义

立足于认知理性的人本主义确立了人的主体地位,最终却将人归结为与物毫无区别的直观的、抽象的存在物.马克思从实践论的视角出发,把人看作是生成的、展开的、自为的存在,弥合了个人与社会、人的现实性与历史性的割裂,发现了摆脱"人的依赖关系"和"物的依赖关系"的秘密,为"全人类的解放"乃至"人是目的"的实现提供了现实的途径.     

The 'heuristics and biases' bias in expert elicitation

Summary.  In the early 1970s Tversky and Kahneman published a series of papers on 'heuristics and biases' describing human inadequacies in assessing probabilities, culminating in a highly popular article in Science . This seminal research has been heavily cited in many fields, including statistics, as the definitive research on probability assessment. Curiously, although this work was debated at the time and more recent work has largely refuted many of the claims, this apparent heuristics and biases bias in elicitation research has gone unremarked. Over a decade of research into the frequency effect, the importance of framing, and cognitive models more generally, has been almost completely ignored by the statistical literature on expert elicitation. To remedy this situation, this review offers a guide to the psychological research on assessing probabilities, both old and new, and gives concrete guidelines for eliciting expert knowledge.     

读《关于“存在”和“是”》一文的几点意见

本文是对汪子嵩、王太庆先生《关于“存在”和“是”》一文的回应。作者首先对希腊语词eimi作了几点补充 ,进而介绍巴纳斯对巴门尼德estin的逻辑主语的研究 ,最后表明作者在译名问题上的立场     

从认知视角释义英语进行体的语义特征

英语进行体作为"体"的一种重要表现形式,一直以来受到语言学界的关注。体和情状密切相关,研究进行体也应从其内部情状入手,去分析进行体内在的最本质的意义。而从认知图式的角度,结合一定的原型范畴理论去释解进行体的语义实质,这种多维且全新的阐释过程将为以后进一步对英语进行体的认知研究提供一定的理据,很有探讨的必要性。     

Early cognitive skills of Mexican-origin children: The roles of parental nativity and legal status

Although one-third of children of immigrants have undocumented parents, little is known about their early development. Using data from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey and decennial census, we assessed how children's cognitive skills at ages 3 to 5 vary by ethnicity, maternal nativity, and maternal legal status. Specifically, Mexican children of undocumented mothers were contrasted with Mexican children of documented mothers and Mexican, white, and black children with U.S.-born mothers. Mexican children of undocumented mothers had lower emergent reading skills than all other groups and lower emergent mathematics skills than all groups with U.S.-born mothers. Multilevel regression models showed that differences in reading skills are explained by aspects of the home environment, but the neighborhood context also matters. Cross-level interactions suggest that immigrant concentration boosts emergent reading and mathematics skills for children with undocumented parents, but does not similarly benefit children whose parents are native born.     

The relevance of situation awareness in older adults’ cognitive functioning: a review

Age-related declines in cognition may have detrimental effects on older adults’ ability to complete everyday activities that young- and middle-aged individuals perform automatically. Theories of cognitive aging have found deficits in older adults’ fluid intelligence, capacity for inhibition, number of processing resources, and speed of processing, and in recent years, studies have proposed cognitive strategies to ameliorate these declines. However, few strategies directly train the cognitive strategies necessary to improve performance in dynamic environments and physical activities. One such strategy may be the enhancement of situation awareness, the capability to perceive and understand one’s environment. Although the term has typically been applied to pilots and other expert performers, situation awareness may also be relevant to cognitive aging, where older adults’ perception and comprehension of their environment become critical to everyday functioning and physical activities. If older adults’ situation awareness can be facilitated, then it may be possible to reduce the impact of age-related cognitive declines, allowing older adults to successfully participate in dynamic situations and sports where the environment is constantly changing (e.g., driving and tennis). The following review outlines cognitive deficits in aging, details their relation to situation awareness, and discusses how training in situation awareness may reduce cognitive declines. Portions of this paper were reported at the annual meeting of the North American Society for the Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity in June, 2005.     

The Efficacy of a Decision Support System in Enhancing Risk Assessment Performance

A pervasive challenge for decision‐makers is evaluating data of varying form (e.g., quantitative vs. qualitative) and credibility in arriving at an overall risk assessment judgment. The current study tests the efficacy of a Decision Support System (DSS) for facilitating auditors’ evaluation and assimilation of financial and nonfinancial information in accurately assessing the risk of material misstatements (RMM) in financial information. Utilizing the proximity compatibility principle, the DSS manipulates the display of cues either in an integral (where pieces of information are displayed on one computer screen) or separable (where pieces of information are displayed on different computer screens) format. Based on cognitive fit theory, we expect that the integral (separable) display best supports financial (nonfinancial) information processing, leading to enhanced risk assessment performance. In addition, we predict that consistent DSS display of financial and nonfinancial information facilitates risk assessment performance. Further, this study accentuates the importance of auditors’ preference for presentation of financial and nonfinancial information and consistent presentation of all the information in strengthening the effect of DSS display format on risk assessment performance. We design a case which includes a seeded high fraud risk. A total of 112 audit seniors participated in the experiment where the DSS display format was manipulated and the auditors’ RMM assessments and display preferences were measured. The results support the hypotheses and highlight the value of the DSS in enhancing risk assessment performance.