An Introduction to the Rule Space Method

• By Kikumi K. Tatsuoka

This book introduces a new methodology for the analysis of test results. Free from ambiguous interpretations, the results truly demonstrate an individual’s progress. The methodology is ideal for highlighting patterns derived from test scores used in evaluating progress. Dr. Tatsuoka introduces readers to the Rule Space Method (RSM), a technique that transforms unobservable knowledge and skill variables into observable and measurable attributes. RSM converts item response patterns into attribute mastery probabilities. RSM is the only up-to-date methodology that can handle large scale assessment for tests such as the SAT and PSAT. PSAT used the results from this methodology to create cognitively diagnostic scoring reports. In this capacity, RSM helps teachers understand what scores mean by helping them ascertain an individual’s cognitive strengths and weaknesses. For example, two students may have the exact same score, but for different reasons. One student might excel at processing grammatically complex texts but miss the main idea of the prose, while another excels at understanding the global message. Such knowledge helps teachers customize a student’s education to his or her cognitive abilities. RSM is also used for medical diagnoses, genetics research, and to help classify music into various states of emotions for treating mental problems.

The book opens with an overview of cognitive assessment research and nonparametric and parametric person-fit statistics. The Q-matrix theory is then introduced followed by the Rule Space method. Various properties of attribute mastery probabilities are then introduced along with the reliability theory of attributes and its connection to classical and item response theory. The book concludes with a discussion of how the construct validity of a test can be clarified with the Rule Space method.

Intended for researchers and graduate students in quantitative, educational, and cognitive psychology, this book also appeals to those in computer science, neuroscience, medicine, and mathematics. The book is appropriate for advanced courses on cognometrics, latent class structures, and advanced psychometrics as well as statistical pattern recognition and classification courses taught in statistics and/or math departments.

ISBN: 9780805828283

Published May 26 2009 by Routledge Academic.

• By Warren Thorngate, Robyn M. Dawes, Margaret Foddy

Merit-based tests and contests have become popular methods for allocating rewards – from trophies to contracts, jobs to grants, admissions to licenses. With origins in jurisprudence, methods of rewarding merit seem fairer than those rewarding political or social connections, bribery, aggression, status, or wealth. Because of this, merit-based competitions are well-suited to the societal belief that people should be rewarded for what they know or do, and not for who they know or are; however, judging merit is rarely an easy task – it is prone to a variety of biases and errors. Small biases and errors, especially in large competitions, can make large differences in who or what is rewarded. It is important, then, to learn how to spot flaws in procedures for judging merit and to correct them when possible.

Based on over 20 years of theory and research in human judgment, decision making and social psychology, this unique book brings together for the first time what is known about the processes and problems of judging merit and their consequences. It also provides practical suggestions for increasing the fairness of merit-based competitions, and examines the future and limits of these competitions in society.

ISBN: 9780805858358

Published November 24 2008 by Psychology Press.

Essays in Honor of Robyn Mason Dawes

• Edited by Joachim I. Krueger

This volume brings together a diverse group of authors who have been associated with Robyn Dawes over the years. The breadth of topics covered reflects Dawes’s wide-ranging impact on psychological theory and empirical practice. The two themes of rationality and social responsibility are well developed in the book. Dawes had always urged investigators to take seriously the question of how individuals can reconcile self-interest (i.e. rationality) with the collective good (i.e. social responsibility). The area of judgment and decision-making poses a similar challenge: here, rational judgment is the most responsible judgment because it minimizes errors. To attain rationality in this domain, individuals need to accept the limitations of their own intuitions.

This volume presents an up-to-date overview of how far psychological science has come in its struggle to reconcile what is true with what is good. Each chapter is a stimulus for new research and a reminder not to forget the hard-won lessons of the past – in particular, those taught by Robyn Dawes.

ISBN: 9780805859966

Published April 09 2008 by Psychology Press.

Reflections on What It Means To Be Rational and Whether We Are

• By Raymond S. Nickerson

What does it mean to be rational – to reason well and effectively? How does rationality, broadly conceived, relate to the knowledge one acquires, the beliefs one forms, the explanations one constructs or appropriates, the judgments and decisions one makes, the values one adopts? What is the character of human reasoning and, in particular, does it tend to be rational?

Much has been written about human rationality – or lack thereof. In recent years, some writers have focused attention on the numerous ways in which people appear not to be rational, at least if being rational is taken to mean always thinking or behaving in accordance with some normative standard. Others have argued that, if human reasoning is as flawed as this work suggests, it is a wonder that we, as a species, are around to notice the fact.

This book examines much of the experimental research on reasoning as it relates to a variety of conceptions of rationality, not limited to conformity of thought and behavior or to the dictates of one or another normative system. The discussion focuses on specific topics that represent essential aspects of any adequately inclusive conception of rationality: intelligence and knowledge; beliefs; goals, values and affect; explanations; judgment and choice; understanding and wisdom.

ISBN: 9781841694870

Published November 19 2007 by Psychology Press.

• By Howard Margolis

One of the most exciting recent innovations in the social sciences has been the emergence of 'behaviour economics', which extends the notion of rational choice to allow for both motivation beyond self-interest and intuitions that cannot be reduced to the logic of a situation. This new book by Howard Margolis demonstrates how an account of widely-discussed topics, from tipping points in social choice to cognitive illusions and experimental anomalies, can be brought within a coherent framework.

Starting from Darwin's own comments on the origins of moral concerns and from a review of notorious cognitive illusions, Margolis shows how rational choice theory can be extended to incorporate social as well as self-interested motivation, but allowing for the cognitive complications that can be expected in domains well-outside familiar experience. This yields a coherent account of many otherwise mystifying results from cooperation experiments.

This book will be of great interest not only to students and researchers in behavioral and experimental economics but across the social sciences.

ISBN: 9780415701976

Published October 31 2007 by Routledge.

• Edited by Henning Plessner, Cornelia Betsch, Tilmann Betsch

The central goal of this volume is to bring the learning perspective into the discussion of intuition in judgment and decision making. The book gathers recent work on intuitive decision making that goes beyond the current dominant heuristic processing perspective. However, that does not mean that the book will strictly oppose this perspective. The unique perspective of this book will help to tie together these different conceptualizations of intuition and develop an integrative approach to the psychological understanding of intuition in judgment and decision making. Accordingly, some of the chapters reflect prior research from the heuristic processing perspective in the new light of the learning perspective.

This book provides a representative overview of what we currently know about intuition in judgment and decision making. The authors provide latest theoretical developments, integrative frameworks and state-of-the-art reviews of research in the laboratory and in the field. Moreover, some chapters deal with applied topics. Intuition in Judgment and Decision Making aims not only at the interest of students and researchers of psychology, but also at scholars from neighboring social and behavioral sciences such as economy, sociology, political sciences, and neurosciences.

ISBN: 9780805857412

Published October 01 2007 by Psychology Press.

The Psychology of Decision Making

• By Benjamin R. Newell, David A. Lagnado, David R. Shanks

We all face a perplexing array of decisions every day. Straight Choices provides an integrative account of the psychology of decision making, in which clear connections are made between empirical results and how these results can help us to understand our uncertain world.

Throughout the text, there is an emphasis on the relationship between learning and decision making. The authors argue that the best way to understand how and why decisions are made is in the context of the learning and knowledge acquisition that precedes them and the feedback that follows them. The mechanisms of learning and the structure of environments in which decisions are made are carefully examined to explore the ways in which they act on our choices. From this, the authors go on to consider whether we are all constrained to fall prey to biases or whether with sufficient exposure can we find optimal decision strategies and improve our decision making.

This novel approach integrates findings from the decision and learning literatures to provide a unique perspective on the psychology of decision making. It will be of interest to researchers and students in cognitive psychology, as well as researchers in economics and philosophy interested in the nature of decision making.

ISBN: 9781841695884

Published June 14 2007 by Psychology Press.

Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Naturalistic Decision Making

• Edited by Robert R. Hoffman

ISBN: 9780805855098

Published May 22 2007 by CRC Press.

• Edited by Marsha C. Lovett, Priti Shah

The chapters in Thinking With Data are based on presentations given at the 33rd Carnegie Symposium on Cognition. The Symposium was motivated by the confluence of three emerging trends: (1) the increasing need for people to think effectively with data at work, at school, and in everyday life, (2) the expanding technologies available to support people as they think with data, and (3) the growing scientific interest in understanding how people think with data.

What is thinking with data? It is the set of cognitive processes used to identify, integrate, and communicate the information present in complex numerical, categorical, and graphical data. This book offers a multidisciplinary presentation of recent research on the topic. Contributors represent a variety of disciplines: cognitive and developmental psychology; math, science, and statistics education; and decision science. The methods applied in various chapters similarly reflect a scientific diversity, including qualitative and quantitative analysis, experimentation and classroom observation, computational modeling, and neuroimaging. Throughout the book, research results are presented in a way that connects with both learning theory and instructional application.

The book is organized in three sections:

• Part I focuses on the concepts of uncertainty and variation and on how people understand these ideas in a variety of contexts.
• Part II focuses on how people work with data to understand its structure and draw conclusions from data either in terms of formal statistical analyses or informal assessments of evidence.
• Part III focuses on how people learn from data and how they use data to make decisions in daily and professional life.

ISBN: 9780805854213

Published May 22 2007 by Psychology Press.

Dual Processes in Reasoning and Judgement

• By Jonathan St. B. T. Evans

Hypothetical thought involves the imagination of possibilities and the exploration of their consequences by a process of mental simulation. Using a recently developed theoretical framework called Hypothetical Thinking Theory, Jonathan St. B. T. Evans provides an integrated theoretical account of a wide range of psychological studies on hypothesis testing, reasoning, judgement and decision making.

Hypothetical thinking theory is built on three key principles, implemented in a revised and updated version of Evans' well-known heuristic–analytic theory of reasoning. The central claim of this book is that this theory can provide an integrated account of some apparently very diverse phenomena including confirmation bias in hypothesis testing, acceptance of fallacies in deductive reasoning, belief biases in reasoning and judgement, biases of statistical judgement and a number of characteristic findings in the study of decision making. The author also provides broad ranging discussion of cognitive biases, human rationality and dual-process theories of higher cognition.

Hypothetical Thinking draws on and develops arguments first proposed in Evans’ earlier work from this series, Bias in Human Reasoning. In the new theory, however, cognitive biases are attributed equally to analytic and heuristic processing and a much wider range of phenomena are reviewed and discussed. It will therefore be of great interest to researchers and post-graduates in psychology and the cognitive sciences, as well as to undergraduate students looking for a comprehensive review of current work on reasoning and decision-making.

ISBN: 9781841696607

Published May 17 2007 by Psychology Press.