London Judgement & Decision Making Group
Summer term 2013 – 2014
Organizers
Neil Bramley
University College London
Contact details:
Department of Cognitive, Perceptual & Brain Sciences
Room 201, 26 Bedford Way, London, WC1H 0AP
UK
E-mail: neil.bramley.10@ucl.ac.uk
Emmanouil Konstantinidis
University College London
Contact details:
Department of Cognitive, Perceptual & Brain Sciences
Room 204c, 26 Bedford Way, London, WC1H 0AP
UK
Telephone: (+44) 020 7679 5364
E-mail: emmanouil.konstantinidis.09@ucl.ac.uk
Leo Cohen
University College London
Contact details:
Department of Cognitive, Perceptual & Brain Sciences
Room 204c, 26 Bedford Way, London, WC1H 0AP
UK
E-mail: l.cohen.12@ucl.ac.uk
LJDM website
http://www.ljdm.info
Web administrator:
Dr Stian Reimers (Stian.Reimers.1@city.ac.uk)
LJDM members’ (Risk & Decision) list
Contact: Dr Marianne Promberger (marianne.promberger@kcl.ac.uk)
Seminar Schedule
April – June 2014
5:00 pm in Room 313, 26 Bedford Way, UCL Psychology
30th April
Children’s understanding of intensive properties of matter. Is this really so
difficult?
Anne Schlottmann
University College London
7th May
Judgement and decision making in chess
Fernand Gobet
University of Liverpool
14th May
TBA
TBA
TBA
21st May
Neural Implementation and Dynamics of Competitive Value Comparison
Laurence Hunt
University College London
28th May
TBA
Dries Trippas
Plymouth University
4th June
TBA
Peter Lane
University of Hertfordshire
Abstracts
30.04.2014
Anne Schlottmann
University College London
Children’s understanding of intensive properties of matter. Is this really so difficult?
Many properties of substances/materials are intensive, and children are widely believed to have
difficulties with reasoning about intensive quantities. Here we focused on children’s
understanding of taste/visual intensity of mixed substances (mixtures of sugar/colouring/sand with
water). We used an Information Integration approach in the belief that, as in studies in other
domains (e.g., probability) this would allow children to display early intuitions missed by choice
methods. We also thought children would have better intuitions when intensity is visible. We
found improved performance with IIT, but improvement was nowhere near as dramatic as in other
domains; visual intensity indicators did not affect performance at all. These results would seem to
confirm that understanding of intensive properties is intrinsically difficult for children.
Subsequently, however, Hong Kong children tested in the same way performed substantially
better than UK children, as often found for math/science. Thus UK children's difficulties do not
reflect a cognitive-developmental limitation, but depend on cultural experience. Current studies
investigate factors involved in this and how we may improve children's understanding of intensity,
including an investigation of how this relates to probability judgment.
07.05.2014
Fernand Gobet
University of Leeds
Judgement and decision making in chess
Problem solving and decision making have evolved in two different and independent fields of
psychological research, although they both study thinking. This divide, which is the outcome of
historical vagaries, seems artificial, as both fields study the way people make decisions. However,
the two fields also differ in interesting ways. Studies in the field of problem solving typically ask
participants to solve problems without providing them with possible answers, are interested in the
cognitive processes involved and mostly use computer modelling as formal theoretical tool. By
contrast, studies in the field of decision making typically provide both the problems and possible
answers, are interested in whether participants are rational (i.e. choose the correct answers) and
not so much in the detail of the cognitive processes involved, and tend to use mathematical
modelling. In this talk, I will illustrate these differences with the game of chess, one of the
domains that have been studied most extensively in the research on expertise. I will also present a
theory that can explain data representative of both traditions, as a theory of chess thinking should.
14.05.2014
NO SEMINAR - TBA
21.05.2014
Laurence Hunt
University College London
Neural Implementation and Dynamics of Competitive Value Comparison
28.05.2014
Dries Trippas
Plymouth University
TBA
04.06.2014
Peter Lane
University of Hertfordshire
TBA