Using Response Times to Infer Others’ Private Information: An Application to Information Cascades

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cary Frydman ◽  
Ian Krajbich

The standard assumption in social learning environments is that agents learn from others through choice outcomes. We argue that in many settings, agents can also infer information from others’ response times (RT), which can increase efficiency. To investigate this, we conduct a standard information cascade experiment and find that RTs do contain information that is not revealed by choice outcomes alone. When RTs are observable, subjects extract this private information and are more likely to break from incorrect cascades. Our results suggest that in environments where RTs are publicly available, the information structure may be richer than previously thought. This paper was accepted by Yan Chen, decision analysis.

2010 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 221-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Eyster ◽  
Matthew Rabin

In social-learning environments, we investigate implications of the assumption that people naïvely believe that each previous person's action reflects solely that person's private information. Naïve herders inadvertently over-weight early movers' private signals by neglecting that interim herders' actions also embed these signals. Such “social confirmation bias” leads them to herd with positive probability on incorrect actions even in extremely rich-information settings where rational players never do. Moreover, because they become fully confident even when wrong, naïve herders can be harmed, on average, by observing others. (JEL D82, D83)


Author(s):  
Julius T. Nganji

The increasing use of social media brings about the need to consider learners with disability when designing learning environments incorporating social learning. Additionally, there is need for educational institutions to consider social media-enriched learning environments. By default, designers and developers of virtual learning environments tend to design for learners without disabilities. The consequences for learners with disabilities are enormous. This chapter aims to propose a disability-aware approach to designing social learning environments that advocates that stakeholders consider the needs of learners with disabilities throughout development. The challenges that learners with disabilities face when interacting with learning systems are reviewed, and a disability-aware approach to designing social learning environments is presented, examining how this could be practically implemented. The opinions and recommendations of 48 students with disabilities from two universities in the United Kingdom and Canada are presented.


Author(s):  
Joseph George M. Lutta

For more than 40 years, cognitive psychological perspectives have dominated pedagogical frameworks and models for designing technology-mediated teaching and learning environments. Social learning perspectives are increasingly becoming viable or even desirable frames for research and practice as pertains to teaching and learning, particularly in web-based learning environments (WBLEs). The author considers these social learning perspectives and how they relate to the design and implementation of curricula that are delivered in web-based learning environments in higher education. The author further reviews the foundational theories of adult learning that enhance adult learners' experiences in cross-cultural web-based learning environments. This review and analysis of the research related to social learning perspectives on WBLEs have three implications for future research and practice: (1) examining learners' individual characteristics in WBLEs, (2) identifying strategies for promoting social interaction in WBLEs, and (3) developing effective design principles for WBLEs. The author presents recommendations for future research.


2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 814-836
Author(s):  
María E. Sousa‐Vieira ◽  
Jose C. López‐Ardao ◽  
Manuel Fernández‐Veiga ◽  
Orlando Ferreira‐Pires

2008 ◽  
pp. 176-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
James G. Jones ◽  
Stephen C. Bronack

Three-dimensional (3D) online social environments have emerged as viable alternatives to traditional methods of creating spaces for teachers and learners to teach to and to learn from one another. Robust environments with a bias toward peer-based, network-driven learning allow learners in formal environments to make meaning in ways more similar to those used in informal and in-person settings. These new created environments do so by accounting for presence, immediacy, movement, artifacts, and multi-modal communications in ways that help learners create their own paths of knowing using peer-supported methods. In this chapter, we will review the basics of the technologies and the theoretical underpinnings that support the development of such environments, provide a framework for creating, sustaining, and considering the effectiveness of such environments, and will conclude by describing two examples of 3D virtual worlds used to support course instruction at the university level.


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