Dirk Wulff has a new paper out on decisions from experience that suggests that pre-decisional information search can provide a window into risk and decision making preferences, and perhaps do so better than choice, which seems to be more sensitive to task characteristics such as those explored in Dirk’s work: “Depending on which environment emerges, choices may or may not be informative about the underlying preferences or aspirations (…). The good news, however, is that decisions from experience paradigms offer an observable psychological dimension that appears to afford researchers another window onto preferences or aspirations: the appetite for information.”

How short- and long-run aspirations impact search and choice in decisions from experience

To what extent do people adapt their information search policies and subsequent decisions to the long- and short-run consequences of choice environments? To address this question, we investigated exploration and exploitation policies in choice environments that involved single or multiple plays. We further compared behavior in these environments with behavior in the standard sampling paradigm. Frequently used in research on decision from experience, this paradigm does not explicitly implement the choice in terms of the short or long run. Results showed that people searched more in the multi-play environment than in the single-play environment. Moreover, the substantial search effort in the multi-play environment was conducive to choices consistent with expected value maximization, whereas the lesser search effort in the single-play environment was compatible with the goal of maximizing the chance of winning something. Furthermore, choice and search behaviors in the sampling paradigm predominantly echoed those observed in the single-play environment. This suggests that, when not instructed otherwise, participants in the sampling paradigm appear to favor search and choice strategies that embody short-run aspirations. Finally, the present findings challenge the revealed preference approach in decisions from experience, while also suggesting that information search may be an important and potentially even better signal of preference or aspirations than choice.

Wulff, D., Hills, T, & Hertwig, R. (2015). How short- and long-run aspirations impact search and choice in decisions from experience. Cognition, 144, 29-57. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2015.07.006

David Kellen has yet another paper out on the nature of recognition memory! His new paper offers a critical test to distinguish between continuous and discrete-state models of recognition memory, with the results favouring the latter. An important aspect of this study is that it compares models by identifying their predictions for specific parts of the data (in this case, confidence judgments for studied words that were not recognized). This approach minimizes the need for auxiliary assumptions and yields more general conclusions than traditional comparison methods.

Signal detection and threshold modeling of confidence-rating ROCs: A critical test with minimal assumptions

An ongoing discussion in the recognition-memory literature concerns the question of whether recognition judgments reflect a direct mapping of graded memory representations (a notion that is instantiated by signal detection theory) or whether they are mediated by a discrete-state representation with the possibility of complete information loss (a notion that is instantiated by threshold models). These 2 accounts are usually evaluated by comparing their (penalized) fits to receiver operating characteristic data, a procedure that is predicated on substantial auxiliary assumptions, which if violated can invalidate results. We show that the 2 accounts can be compared on the basis of critical tests that invoke only minimal assumptions. Using previously published receiver operating characteristic data, we show that confidence-rating judgments are consistent with a discrete-state account.

Kellen, D. & Klauer, K. C. (2015). Signal detection and threshold modeling of confidence-rating ROCs: A critical test with minimal assumptions. Psychological Review, 122, 542-547.