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

我们的研究工作有两个首要目标：第一个认识论和第二个方法论。我们的认识论目标涉及复杂领域背景下的自然主义决策(NDM)。我们的申请是一个重要的经济问题，对社会福利后果的评估经常导致专家和受影响的非专家公民的立场冲突。我们认为，这种冲突在很大程度上是因为专家和非专家在评估和形成决策时使用不同的认知过程。我们提出了一种模拟技术，旨在促进这些认知过程的收敛，并假设这将导致冲突程度的降低。我们有两个方法论目标。首先，我们将使用交互式、身临其境的虚拟现实(VR)模拟技术，在受控环境中再现自然主义领域的决策者所依赖的丰富线索和信息。我们选择的应用程序--森林管理政策--是决策环境的一个很好的例子，它具有丰富的信息线索和互动，预计专家的经验将在很大程度上影响决策。我们的第二个方法论目标是将受控经济学实验的技术与NDM的技术相结合。实验的力量在于可复制性和可控性，通过虚拟现实模拟的力量扩展这些能力，这项研究将允许我们以迄今不可行的方式探索决策问题。我们将比较参与者使用标准最先进的问卷做出的决定，其中情景以文字和图片描述，与使用VR技术的互动体验做出的决定进行比较。我们假设，与标准的文字和图片描述相比，沉浸式交互式VR环境中专家和非专家之间的价值观和决策差异较小。提出的研究将在经济学、心理学和计算机科学中具有价值。在经济学中，这项研究将有助于扩展标准的预期效用理论，将背景和熟悉度的作用包括在内。在心理科学领域，这项研究为自然主义领域的理论发展和测试提供了一个独特的机会。计算机科学的进步将是开发实时、逼真的渲染算法，并将这些算法集成到一个全面的混合现实系统中。

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.