Issue 1/2 Vol. 39 1997

Cognitive processing and knowledge representation in decision making under uncertainty

FOX, J., COOPER, R.

This article is a contribution to the current debate on the role of cognitive theory in our understanding of human judgement and decision making under uncertainty. We argue, with Busemeyer et al. and others, that the theoretical and methodological traditions of the Judgement and Decision Making community and mainstream cognitive science are divergent to an undesirable extent, and that the exploitation of established concepts of information processing theories and knowledge representation would considerably strengthen the field. The paper revisits and extends an earlier study Making decisions under the influence of memory (Fox, 1980) in order to explore how these proposals might be applied in practice. A central technique developed by cognitive scientists is that of computational modelling; the paper makes extensive use of a new modelling tool, COGENT, to show how cognitive theory can significantly illuminate the mental processes involved in complex, real-world decisions.

Keywords: medical decision making, knowledge representation, modelling decision making, simulation experiments

Short Title: Fox, J. (1997) PsyBeit 1-2:83

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