experimental and empirical research
Chris R. Sims, Hansjörg Neth, Robert A. Jacobs, Wayne D. Gray
Abstract: Melioration — defined as choosing a lesser, local gain over a greater longer term gain — is a behavioral tendency that people and pigeons share. As such, the empirical occurrence of meliorating behavior has frequently been interpreted as evidence that the mechanisms of human choice violate the norms of economic rationality. In some environments, the relationship between actions and outcomes is known. In this case, the rationality of choice behavior can be evaluated in terms of how successfully it maximizes utility given knowledge of the environmental contingencies. In most complex environments, however, the relationship between actions and future outcomes is uncertain and must be learned from experience. When the difficulty of this learning challenge is taken into account, it is not evident that melioration represents suboptimal choice behavior.
‘Can you do Addition?’ the White Queen asked. ‘What’s one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one?’ ‘I don’t know,’ said Alice. ‘I lost count.’ |
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, Chapter IX. |
Hansjörg Neth, Stephen J. Payne
Abstract: Does using our hands help us to add the value of a set of coins?
Arjon Buikstra, Hansjörg Neth, Lael J. Schooler, Annette ten Teije, Frank van Harmelen
Abstract: We address the problem how to select the correct answers to a query from among the partially incorrect answer sets that result from querying the Web of Data.
If an organism is confronted with the problem of behaving approximately rationally, or adaptively, in a particular environment, the kinds of simplifications that are suitable may depend not only on the characteristics—sensory, neural, and other—of the organism, but equally on the nature of the environment. |
H.A. Simon (1956), Rational choice and the structure of the environment, p. 130 |
Hansjörg Neth, Sangeet S. Khemlani, Wayne D. Gray
Objective: We distinguish outcome feedback from control feedback to show that suboptimal performance in a dynamic multitasking system may be caused by limits inherent to the information provided rather than human resource limits.