Cognitive Technologies

Presentation at 10th International Conference on Naturalistic Decision Making, Orlando, FL, June, 2011: Cohen, M. S., & Lipshitz, Raanan (2011). Three Roads to Commitment: An Integrative Framework for Decision Making. e Time and Uncertainty in Naturalistic Decision Making. This chapter focuses on a critical issue in NDM research: experts management... of the time they take to gather information and verify assessments and decisions. We critique NDM theories that equate expertise entirely with substantive knowledge, trivilizing the issue of time management. Satisfactory management of time for deliberation requires not only substantive domain knowledge but also the acquisition of strategic thinking skill. We cite both conceptual arguments and experimental evidence with commercial airline pilots for this hypothesis, and we present a model of a relatively automatic process for allocating time baseed on animal foraging. The foraging for surprise model predicts that thinking strategies will improve as decision makers spend varying amounts of time deliberating about tasks that vary in known uncertainty, novelty, and cost of delay. We contrast this model with a "stopping rule" proposal that imples fixed, pre-existing knowledge structures (Klein, et al.'s Data-Frame theory). We sketch some implications for training and decision aiding from an NDM perspective. The following can be downloaded: Cohen, M. S. (2011). Knowns, Known Unknowns, and Unknown Unknows: Time and Uncertainty in Naturalistic Decision Making. In K. Mosier and U. Fischer (Eds.), Knowledge management: Expert performance in complex situations e Dialogue and Critical Thinking. Critical thinking is a purposive dialogue with oneself or others, about alternative possibilities. Critical thinking usually takes place in a practical context, where its purpose is to improve situation understanding or decisionmaking -- by proposing, critiquing, evaluating, and improving alternative hypotheses, interpretations of evidence, predicted outcomes, goals, and courses of ...Read More