DRU: Cognition in natural environments: Using simulated scenarios in complex decision making experiments

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Our research effort has two overarching goals: the first epistemological and the second methodological. Our epistemological goal concerns naturalistic decision making (NDM) in the context of complex domains. Our application is an important economic problem where the evaluation of the social welfare consequences often leads to conflicting positions by experts and affected non-expert citizens. We argue that much of this conflict is created because experts and non-experts use different cognitive processes when evaluating and forming decisions. We propose a simulation technique designed to facilitate a convergence in these cognitive processes, and hypothesize that this will lead to a reduction in the degree of conflict. We have two methodological goals. First, we will use interactive, immersive virtual-reality (VR) simulation technologies to recreate, in a controlled environment, the rich array of cues and information relied upon by decision-makers in naturalistic domains. The application we have selected, forest management policies, is a good example of a decision environment with a rich set of information cues and interactions, and where the experience of experts is expected to matter in significant ways to the decisions made. Our second methodological goal is to blend the techniques of controlled economics experimentation with those of NDM. The power of experimentation lies in replicability and control, and by extending these capabilities through the power of VR simulations, this research will allow us to explore issues in decision making in ways heretofore not feasible. We will compare decisions made by participants using standard state-of-the-art questionnaires, where scenarios are described in words and with pictures, to those made using the interactive experience of the VR technology. We hypothesize that the differences in values and decisions between experts and non-experts is smaller with the immersive, interactive VR environment than with the standard word and picture descriptions. The research proposed will be valuable within economics, psychology, and computer science. Within economics, the research will contribute to the extension of standard expected utility theory to include the role of context and familiarity. Within the psychological sciences, this research presents a unique opportunity for theory development and testing in naturalistic domains. The advances in computer science will be in the development of algorithms for real-time, realistic rendering and the integration of these in a comprehensive mixed reality system.