Workshop on Mathematical Psychology, Irvine, California, July 6-25, 1997

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9631931 LUCE A number of decades have passed since the initial lines of research in mathematical psychology were charted out and the first generation of scientists were trained. This three-week, parallel track workshop will bring together 10-12 senior mathematical behavioral scientists and 20 junior ones (advanced graduate students and young postdoctoral scientists) to reflect on and synthesize these developments, and to lay out the ground work for future research. The workshop will focus on six areas, each involving two senior people and all of the junior ones. The modeling areas will include (1) perception and psychophysics, (2) learning and memory, (3) information processing, (4) measurement, (5) judgment and decision making, and (6) general modeling and testing issues. The profession will benefit in two major ways. First, because much of the existing work is scattered throughout many journals and books and because many of the younger scholars, who are trained primarily in one area, are located in more-or-less isolated settings without senior colleagues, it is difficult for them to become fully aware of state-of-the-art mathematical modeling approaches arising in other areas but potentially useful in their research. In a broad sense, then, the workshop is designed to consolidate past research of the field and to nurture the next generation of scientists. Second, by doing this systematically and providing ample time for interactions, it is possible that new lines of research will be initiated. Materials prepared in advance, during, and after the workshop will be made available to a much wider audience on the World Wide Web. Depending upon the outcome of the several sections, edited volumes may appear. Though the goal of such work is deeper scientific understanding of various aspects of human behavior, there is great potential for direct benefit to society. In the past, such developments have, among other things, led to better ways t o measure student's accomplishments (first, IQ testing which evolved into a large industry and now, newer, more multi-faceted approaches that are reaching schools), models to describe quite accurately decision making in situations of uncertainty, which has led to the profession of decision analysts, and vastly improved research on visual and auditory systems, which has been used to improve the performance of people in various human-machine interfaces. New modeling work can be expected to greatly improve these existing applications, as well as to provide the possibility for additional applications. ***