scholarly journals Intraparietal stimulation disrupts negative distractor effects in human multi-alternative decision-making

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carmen Kohl ◽  
Michelle Wong ◽  
Jing Jun Wong ◽  
Matthew Rushworth ◽  
Bolton Chau
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Causal Link ◽  
Decision Space ◽  
Binary Decision ◽  
Distractor Effect ◽  
Divisive Normalization ◽  
Human Decision ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Alternative Decision ◽  
Different Parts

Abstract There has been debate about whether addition of an irrelevant distractor option to an otherwise binary decision influences which of the two choices is taken. We show that disparate views on this question are reconciled if distractors exert two opposing but not mutually exclusive effects. Each effect predominates in a different part of decision space: 1) a positive distractor effect predicts high-value distractors improve decision-making; 2) a negative distractor effect, of the type associated with divisive normalisation models, entails decreased accuracy with increased distractor values. Here, we demonstrate both distractor effects coexist in human decision making but in different parts of a decision space defined by the choice values. We show disruption of the medial intraparietal area (MIP) by transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) increases positive distractor effects at the expense of negative distractor effects. Furthermore, individuals with larger MIP volumes are also less susceptible to the disruption induced by TMS. These findings also demonstrate a causal link between MIP and the impact of distractors on decision-making via divisive normalization.

scholarly journals Intraparietal stimulation disrupts negative distractor effects in human multi-alternative decision-making

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carmen Kohl ◽  
Michelle Wong ◽  
Matthew Rushworth ◽  
Bolton Chau
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation ◽  
Magnetic Stimulation ◽  
Causal Link ◽  
Decision Space ◽  
Binary Decision ◽  
Distractor Effect ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Alternative Decision

Abstract There has been debate about whether addition of an irrelevant distractor option to an otherwise binary decision influences which of the two choices is taken. We show that disparate views on this question are reconciled if distractors exert two opposing but not mutually exclusive effects. Each effect predominates in a different part of decision space: 1) a positive distractor effect predicts high-value distractors improve decision-making; 2) a negative distractor effect, of the type associated with divisive normalisation models entails decreased accuracy with increased distractor values. Here, we demonstrate both distractor effects and show disruption of medial intraparietal area (MIP) by transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) increases positive distractor effects at the expense of negative distractor effects. Furthermore, individuals with larger MIP volumes are also less susceptible to the disruption induced by TMS. These findings also demonstrate a causal link between MIP and the impact of distractors on decision-making.

scholarly journals Humans balance breadth and depth: Near-optimal performance in many-alternative decision making

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice Vidal ◽  
Salvador Soto-Faraco ◽  
Rubén Moreno Bote
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Power Law ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
Optimal Performance ◽  
Experimental Paradigm ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Alternative Decision ◽  
Optimal Behaviour

Many everyday life decisions require allocating finite resources, such as attention or time, to examine multiple available options, like choosing an online food supplier. In these cases, our search resources can be spread across many options (breadth) or focused on a few of them (depth). Whilst theoretical work has described how finite resources should be allocated to maximise utility in these problems, evidence about how humans balance breadth and depth is lacking. We introduce a novel experimental paradigm where humans make a many-alternative decision under finite resources. In an imaginary scenario, participants allocate a finite budget to sample amongst multiple apricot suppliers in order to estimate the quality of their fruits, and ultimately choose the best one. We found that at low budget capacity participants sample as many suppliers as possible, and thus prefer breadth, whereas at high capacities participants sample just a few chosen alternatives in depth, and intentionally ignore the rest. The number of alternatives sampled increases with capacity following a power law with an exponent close to 0.75. In richer environments, where good outcomes are more likely, humans further favour depth. Participants deviate from optimality and tend to allocate capacity amongst the selected alternatives more homogeneously than it would be optimal, but the impact on the outcome is small. Overall, our results undercover a rich phenomenology of close-to-optimal behaviour and biases in complex choices.

Uncertainty Forecasts Improve Decision Making Among Nonexperts

2009 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 209-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Limor Nadav-Greenberg ◽  
Susan L. Joslyn
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Traditional Research ◽  
Weather Uncertainty ◽  
Human Decision ◽  
The One ◽  
Normative Models ◽  
Uncertainty Information ◽  
The Impact

The objective of this research was to evaluate the impact of weather uncertainty information on decision making in naturalistic settings. Traditional research often reveals deficits in human decision making under uncertainty as compared with normative models of rational choice. However, little research has addressed the question of whether people in naturalistic settings make better decisions when they have uncertainty information as compared with when they have only a deterministic forecast. Two studies investigated the effect of several types of weather uncertainty information on the quality of decisions to protect roads against icing and on temperature predictions and compared them with a control condition that provided deterministic forecast only. Experiment 1 was a Web-based questionnaire that included a single trial. Experiment 2, conducted in lab, included 120 trials and provided outcome feedback and a reward based on performance. Both studies indicated enhanced performance with uncertainty information. The best kind of uncertainty information tested here was the one that provided the probability at the threshold for the task at hand. We conclude that uncertainty information can be used advantageously, even when it does not result in perfectly rational performance, and that uncertainty can be communicated effectively to nonexpert end users, resulting in improved decision making.

scholarly journals The Influence of Cognitive Biases in Production Planning and Control: Considering the Human Factor for the Design of Decision Support Systems

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Bendul ◽  
Melanie Zahner
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Decision Support ◽  
Production Planning ◽  
Cognitive Biases ◽  
Production Planning And Control ◽  
Due Date ◽  
Planning And Control ◽  
Human Decision ◽  
And Control ◽  
The Impact

Production planning and control (PPC) requires human decision-making in several process steps like production program planning, production data management, and performance measurement. Thereby, human decisions are often biased leading to an aggravation of logistic performance. Exemplary, the lead time syndrome (LTS) shows this connection. While production planners aim to improve due date reliability by updating planned lead times, the result is actually a decreasing due date reliability. In current research in the field of production logistics, the impact of cognitive biases on the decision-making process in production planning and control remains at a silent place. We aim to close this research gap by combining a systematic literature review on behavioral operation management and cognitive biases with a case study from the steel industry to show the influence of cognitive biases on human decision-making in production planning and the impact on logistic performance. The result is the definition of guidelines considering human behavior for the design of decision support systems to improve logistic performance.

Systems Simulation of Design for End-of-Life Recovery Under Uncertainty

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Behdad ◽  
Aaron T. Joseph ◽  
Deborah Thurston
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Product Design ◽  
End Of Life ◽  
Reverse Logistics ◽  
Cognitive Biases ◽  
Design Features ◽  
Product Life ◽  
Return Flows ◽  
Human Decision ◽  
The Impact

Design for End of Life (DfEOL) recovery is a complex process that requires consideration of various design aspects including design for product life extension, design for reliability, design for disassembly, design for components reuse, and design for recyclability. There is a need for an analytical tool that helps designers integrate all these design aspects together and moreover investigate the impact of design features on the recovery network. The designer needs to predict the variability that design features bring into the reverse logistics network, including the variability in the amount, quality and timing of return flows and uncertainty in the remanufacturing operations such as disassembly time. In addition to the product design, the EOL recovery system performance is also affected by human decision making. The willingness of customers to keep used products in storage, the qualitative criteria used by remanufacturing companies to sort and categorize the returned used products and the manual disassembly operations influenced by the operator’s cognitive biases are examples of human decision making processes that impact product recovery. The nonlinear character of reverse logistics system along with the dynamic complexity as a result of uncertainties and cognitive biases are particularly troublesome. This paper establishes a simulation-based System Dynamics (SD) model of product life cycle to check interrelationship among product design features and their impacts on the amount, quality and timing of the return flows to the waste stream. The complex product take back process and recovery operations are modeled. Designers could use the results of the model to compare different design scenarios and to receive information about what design features bring problems or create opportunities for EOL recovery.

scholarly journals Decision Aiding to Overcome Biases in Object Identification

2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Fendley ◽  
S. Narayanan
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Decision Support ◽  
Decision Support System ◽  
Support System ◽  
Cognitive Biases ◽  
Target Identification ◽  
Object Identification ◽  
Identification Accuracy ◽  
Human Decision ◽  
The Impact

Human decision makers typically use heuristics under time-pressured situations. These heuristics can potentially degrade task performance through the impact of their associated biases. Using object identification in image analysis as the context, this paper identifies cognitive biases that play a role in decision making. We propose a decision support system to help overcome these biases in this context. Results show that the decision support system improved human decision making in object identification, including metrics such as time taken to identify targets in an image set, accuracy of target identification, accuracy of target classification, and quantity of false positive identification.

scholarly journals Towards a Utility Theory of Privacy and Information Sharing and the Introduction of Hyper-Hyperbolic Discounting in the Digital Big Data Age

2020 ◽  
pp. 157-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Puaschunder
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Big Data ◽  
Information Sharing ◽  
Data Storage ◽  
Hyperbolic Discounting ◽  
Human Decision ◽  
Data Hoarding ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Share Information ◽  
Over Time

Today enormous data storage capacities and computational power in the e-big data era have created unforeseen opportunities for big data hoarding corporations to reap hidden benefits from individuals' information sharing, which occurs bit by bit in small tranches over time. Behavioral economics describes human decision-making fallibility over time but has—to this day—not covered the problem of individuals' decision to share information about themselves in tranches on social media and big data administrators being able to reap a benefit from putting data together over time and reflecting the individual's information in relation to big data of others. The decision-making fallibility inherent in individuals having problems understanding the impact of their current information sharing in the future is introduced as hyper-hyperbolic discounting decision-making predicament.

scholarly journals Consistent patterns of distractor effects during decision making

eLife ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bolton KH Chau ◽  
Chun-Kit Law ◽  
Alizée Lopez-Persem ◽  
Miriam C Klein-Flügge ◽  
Matthew FS Rushworth
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Neural Signals ◽  
Decision Space ◽  
Neuroimaging Data ◽  
Dual Route ◽  
Dual Route Model ◽  
Decision Making Model ◽  
Different Parts ◽  
Potential Option

The value of a third potential option or distractor can alter the way in which decisions are made between two other options. Two hypotheses have received empirical support: that a high value distractor improves the accuracy with which decisions between two other options are made and that it impairs accuracy. Recently, however, it has been argued that neither observation is replicable. Inspired by neuroimaging data showing that high value distractors have different impacts on prefrontal and parietal regions, we designed a dual route decision-making model that mimics the neural signals of these regions. Here we show in the dual route model and empirical data that both enhancement and impairment effects are robust phenomena but predominate in different parts of the decision space defined by the options’ and the distractor’s values. However, beyond these constraints, both effects co-exist under similar conditions. Moreover, both effects are robust and observable in six experiments.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document