Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1989. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 113-117).

The effects of decision task complexity, decision importance, and decision maker impulsivity on decision making behavior were studied in this thesis. Measures involving time and acquisition of information were devised as well as specialized measures of decision strategy complexity. Thirty-six subjects classified as either high- or low-impulsives (eighteen male, eighteen female) performed decision tasks involving the selection of the “best” apartment from a group of apartments that were homogeneous with respect to desirability. Decision task complexity was manipulated by increasing the number of apartments from which the subject had to choose. Decision importance was manipulated by changing the reward associated for selecting the best apartment. A theoretical decision strategy selection mechanism, based on a similar mechanism proposed by Christensen-Szalanski (1978), was developed to explain the relationship between the independent variables in this study and decision strategy selection. Results indicated partial support for the theoretical mechanism and highlighted areas for future research. / Master of Science

Title page, table of contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University of Adelaide Library. / In recent years, the adequacy of classical models to explain expert decision-making in environments involving time pressure, high stakes, uncertainty and dynamic conditions has been questioned. An alternative model to describe decision-making in these conditions is the recognition-primed decision-making (RPD) model (Klein, 1989). This model is descriptive and suggests that expert decision-makers learn to recognise typical situations and solutions and use these mental shortcuts to fill in gaps in their understanding and inform their decisionmaking. The model has been validated in many domains (Klein, 1999), but to date has not been applied in the Australian Army. Moreover, the model has been criticised because it largely ignores the influence of the wider context in dynamic decision-making. The aim of this research is to address these issues. The setting has been the unit level of operations in the Australian Army. In particular, the focus is on the Commander, as slhe has the largest impact on the strategic direction of an operation. The approach combines a number of complementary data collection methods, drawing on both qualitative and quantitative data. The main methods of data collection include in-depth, semi-structured interviewing; Q-sort analysis; and observational research in the field. These are triangulated to increase validity. Computer simulation is also used to investigate its adequacy for further naturalistic decision-making (NDM) research. The outcome is frrstly a validation of the RPD model in the Australian Army and revision to include contextual variables perceived to impact on NDM. The effect of these contextual variables on RPD requires further research using naturalistic techniques. Computer simulation has been found to be an unsatisfactory technique to employ in this instance. These are important outcomes as the Australian Army moves towards an era of Networked Centric Warfare where established structures for team work are being revised. Establishing a better understanding of contextual factors that impact on NDM enables policy makers to take this knowledge into account when hypothesising about the effect that structural changes might have on business processes. Thus, having better defined models, and research techniques identified to achieve this, is a benefit. / http://proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/login?url= http://library.adelaide.edu.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=1277501 / Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Psychology, 2007

Title page, table of contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University of Adelaide Library. / In recent years, the adequacy of classical models to explain expert decision-making in environments involving time pressure, high stakes, uncertainty and dynamic conditions has been questioned. An alternative model to describe decision-making in these conditions is the recognition-primed decision-making (RPD) model (Klein, 1989). This model is descriptive and suggests that expert decision-makers learn to recognise typical situations and solutions and use these mental shortcuts to fill in gaps in their understanding and inform their decisionmaking. The model has been validated in many domains (Klein, 1999), but to date has not been applied in the Australian Army. Moreover, the model has been criticised because it largely ignores the influence of the wider context in dynamic decision-making. The aim of this research is to address these issues. The setting has been the unit level of operations in the Australian Army. In particular, the focus is on the Commander, as slhe has the largest impact on the strategic direction of an operation. The approach combines a number of complementary data collection methods, drawing on both qualitative and quantitative data. The main methods of data collection include in-depth, semi-structured interviewing; Q-sort analysis; and observational research in the field. These are triangulated to increase validity. Computer simulation is also used to investigate its adequacy for further naturalistic decision-making (NDM) research. The outcome is frrstly a validation of the RPD model in the Australian Army and revision to include contextual variables perceived to impact on NDM. The effect of these contextual variables on RPD requires further research using naturalistic techniques. Computer simulation has been found to be an unsatisfactory technique to employ in this instance. These are important outcomes as the Australian Army moves towards an era of Networked Centric Warfare where established structures for team work are being revised. Establishing a better understanding of contextual factors that impact on NDM enables policy makers to take this knowledge into account when hypothesising about the effect that structural changes might have on business processes. Thus, having better defined models, and research techniques identified to achieve this, is a benefit. / http://proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/login?url= http://library.adelaide.edu.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=1277501 / Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Psychology, 2007

"Reprinted from Information and Control, vol. 53, no.3, 1982." / Bibliography: leaves 217-218. / "ONR/N00014-77-C-0532(NR041-519)"

Although we rarely think about our everyday cognition as skilled cognition --- because it comes naturally and all of us possess it --- we are all experts in mastering our everyday environment. This expertise may be manifested in mundane or everyday tasks like discerning familiar faces from strangers, or for some people, in more complex situations such as determining whether to swing at a 95mph fastball. The athlete's brain offers a good opportunity for studying neuroplasticity and perceptual expertise because athletes participate in long term training and practice, often starting very early in childhood, and continuing throughout their entire careers. The goal of this dissertation is to investigate the effect of expertise on brain network dynamics during perceptual decision making tasks using techniques for multimodal data fusion. Specifically, we design novel stimuli and methods of combining simultaneously collected electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate brain networks involved in the split-second decisions faced by baseball batters. Using single-trial analysis with experts in baseball, we find the neural correlates of expertise in baseball pitch recognition in both the temporal domain (EEG) and spatial domain (fMRI). We find that experts in baseball pitch recognition exhibit larger activations in early visual prediction networks as well as motor planning areas which aid in the experts superior behavioral performance. In this dissertation, we also focus on leveraging the complementary strengths of the two neuroimaging modalities (EEG, fMRI) to create novel fusion techniques that can provide richer network dynamics than by either modality separately. We design a novel encoding model to fuse EEG and fMRI to provide unprecedented spatio-temporal resolution of a perceptual decision in the human brain. On top of the methodologies for EEG-fMRI fusion, we show that motion correction hardware can be implemented to significantly improve signal-to-noise for fMRI acquisition by reducing motion artifacts which highly contaminate simultaneous EEG-fMRI data. These tools taken together provide researchers with another dimension---temporal ordering of brain activations--- to probe behavioral, psychological, or even compromised states during perceptual decision making.

Thesis--University of Oklahoma. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 57-61).

M.A. / Development administrators in the Third World, whether attached to Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) or Third World governments, face the same kind of problems. Considering the high failure rate of "development" in Third World countries, the major challenge is to implement development programmes effectively. Development in the Third World is highly complex due to a vast variety of regional variations in terms of historical, economic and political factors, and diverse cultures and traditions, etcetera, crammed together in states that were initiated and demarcated by the previous colonial powers of the Western world. Implementing Western development policies successfully in the Third World without taking the above diversity into consideration has detrimental and stagnating results. This study highlights some causes, elements and the consequences of inertia. The purpose is to make administrators, organizations and governments aware of the negative effect of this phenomenon. A literary review indicates that inertia exists virtually in all development circumstances, and if inertia is ignored, it will inhibit the effective and efficient implementation of development programmmes. This finding is substantiated by the experiences of the Reconstruction and Development Program (RDP), indicated in case studies from the Northern Province of South Africa. These case studies revealed certain elements of inertia that not only delay the execution of RDP projects, but also underline the nature of financial burdens as a result thereof. Furthermore, the different types of pathology in the Third World, such as the patrimonial state and Sultanism, create a situation full of loopholes allowing inertia to take its toll. The impact of these "types" of government is highlighted by the excessive centralization of decision-making, the sheer size of the civil services as well as the obsession of political leaders in the Third World to obtain power and self-enrichment. Inertia is like an octopus that spreads its tentacles to all spheres of civil service operations and has a detrimental impact on the effective implementation of development projects. The operation of civil services in the Third World not only delays the processing of development policies, but has a negative impact on the attitude of civil servants as well. The findings are substantiated by the consequences of the rigid rules and regulations in the civil service as well as the inadequacy of civil servants to operate efficiently. The implementation of the recommendations of this study to eliminate inertia calls for a review of development strategies used by developers in order to successfully address the highlighted practical problems of implementation.

A large literature has documented a pattern of stochastic, or random, choice in individual decision making. In games, in which payoffs depend on beliefs over opponents’ behavior, another potentially important source of stochasticity is in the beliefs themselves. Hence, there may be both “noisy actions” and “noisy beliefs”. This dissertation explores the equilibrium implications of both types of noise in normal form games. Theory is developed to understand the effects of noisy beliefs, and the model is compared to the canonical model of noisy actions. Predictions—and assumptions—are tested using existing and novel experimental data. Chapter 1 introduces noisy belief equilibrium (NBE) for normal form games, a model that injects “noisy beliefs” into an otherwise standard equilibrium framework. Axioms restrict the belief distributions to be unbiased with respect to and responsive to changes in the opponents’ behavior. We compare NBE to an axiomatic form of quantal response equilibrium (QRE) in which players have correct beliefs over their opponents’ behavior, but take “noisy actions”. We show that NBE generates similar predictions as QRE such as the “own-payoff effect”, and yet is more consistent with the empirically documented effects of changes in payoff magnitude. Unlike QRE, NBE is a refinement of rationalizability and invariant to affine transformations of payoffs. Chapter 2, joint with Jeremy Ward, studies an equilibrium model in which there is both “noisy actions” and “noisy beliefs”. The model primitives are an action-map, which determines a distribution of actions given beliefs, and a belief-map, which determines a distribution of beliefs given opponents’ behavior. These are restricted to satisfy the axioms of QRE and NBE, respectively, which are simply stochastic generalizations of “best response” and “correct beliefs”. In our laboratory experiment, we collect actions data and elicit beliefs for each game within a family of asymmetric 2-player games. These games have systematically varied payoffs, allowing us to “trace out” both the action- and belief-maps. We find that, while both sources of noise are important in explaining observed behaviors, there are systematic violations of the axioms. In particular, although all subjects observe and play the same games, subjects in different roles have qualitatively different belief biases. To explain this, we argue that the player role itself induces a higher degree of strategic sophistication in the player who faces more asymmetric payoffs. This is confirmed by structural estimates. Chapter 3 considers logit QRE (LQRE), the common parametric form of QRE; and we endogenize its precision parameter "lambda", which controls the degree of “noisy actions”. In the first stage of an endogenous quantal response equilibrium (EQRE), each player chooses her precision optimally subject to costs, taking as given other players’ (second-stage) behavior. In the second stage, the distribution of players’ actions is a heterogenous LQRE given the profile of first-stage precision choices. EQRE satisfies a modified version of the regularity axioms, nests LQRE as a limiting case for a sequence of cost functions, and admits analogues of classic results for LQRE such as those for equilibrium selection. We show how EQRE differs from LQRE using the family of generalized matching pennies games.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / While the majority of chronic pain patients report receiving inadequate care, there is evidence that female and Black patients receive less analgesic medications and treatment for their chronic pain compared to male and White patients, respectively. While treatment disparities have been evidenced in the literature, there is little understanding of provider-factors, such as their decision-making awareness and attitudes, which may contribute to the differences in treatment. This investigation employed quantitative and qualitative procedures to examine the relationship between patient demographics and chronic pain treatment variability, providers’ awareness of these non-medical influences on their decisions, and the extent to which providers’ gender and racial attitudes associate with their treatment decisions. Twenty healthcare trainees made pain treatment decisions (opioid, antidepressant, physical therapy, pain specialty referral) for 16 computer-simulated patients presenting with chronic low back pain; patient sex and race were manipulated across vignettes. Participants then selected among 9 factors, including patient demographics, to indicate which factors influenced their treatment decisions for the simulated patients and completed gender and racial attitude measures. After online study completion, follow-up semi-structured interviews were conducted to discuss the medical/non-medical factors that influence trainees’ clinical treatment decisions. Quantitative analysis indicated that 5%-25% of trainees were actually influenced (p<0.10) by patient sex and race in their treatments, and on the whole, trainees gave higher antidepressant ratings to White than Black patients (p<.05). Fifty-five percent demonstrated concordance, or awareness, between their actual and reported use of patient demographics. Follow-up McNemar’s test indicated trainees were generally aware of the influence of demographics on their decisions. Overall, gender and racial attitudes did not associate with trainees’ treatment decisions, except trainees’ complementary stereotypes about Black individuals were positively associated with their opioid decisions for White patients. During qualitative interviews, aware and unaware trainees discussed similar themes related to sex and racial/ethnic differences in pain presentation and tailoring treatments. We found that (1) a subset of trainees were influenced by patient sex and race when making chronic pain treatment decisions, (2) trainees were generally aware of the influence of patient demographics, and (3) trainees discussed differences in pain presentation based on patients’ sex and ethnic origin. These findings suggest trainees’ are influenced by patient demographics and hold stereotypes about patient populations, which may play a role in their decision-making.