Research on Identification of Mental System Architecture

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A fruitful approach to the study of human behavior is the use of the relationships between the environment, the perceptual information flow, and the consequent behavior to infer psychological structure and function, the architecture of the mental system. From this approach, psychological functions such as perception, motivation, cognition, decision making, learning, memory, and problem solving are seen as embedded in abstract models of the internal psychological states. An important approach to the modeling of these psychological functions is to do so with closed-form mathematical models (which may, of course, need to be studied at times using computer simulations). At least as important as the individual models of individual processes is the mathematical exploration of the qualitative and quantitative behavior of mental systems which exhibit particular properties. Townsend's laboratory has been, with the aid of prior NSF support, a main source of such mathematical results. This project is designed to investigate the behavior of mental systems which have the following properties: (1) information flows only forward, with no feedback loops; (2) flow is continuous, with partial information being transmitted throughout the system on a continuous basis, rather than each subprocess being completed before it sends the results on down the line; and (3) the outputs of each process are stochastic, i.e. involve elements of randomness. In addition, results will be extended to systems that meet conditions (1) and (3), but not (2). Experimental work will be directed toward discovery of qualitative properties involving reaction time and accuracy that will make it possible to identify the system architecture. Other experiments will involve exploration of theoretical results obtained recently. Finally, a mathematical model will be constructed for a recent experimental paradigm that acquires continuous measures of response tendencies. This research, though basic, impacts in an indirect way on education and on the design of machines with which people must interact.