[ACT-R-users] Call for Papers - Special Issue of the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making - Strategy Selection: A Theoretical and Methodological Challenge

Thu Jun 12 09:58:27 EDT 2014

Apologies for cross-postings.

Special Issue of the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making

Call for Papers

Strategy Selection:

A Theoretical and Methodological Challenge 

Deadline: January 31st, 2015

Guest editors:

Julian N. Marewski (julian.marewski at unil.ch; University of Lausanne)

Arndt Bröder (broeder at uni-mannheim.de; University of Mannheim)

Andreas Glöckner (andreas.gloeckner at psych.uni-goettingen.de; University of
Göttingen)

Resident Editor:

George Wright (University of Strathclyde; george.wright at strath.ac.uk)

The Journal of Behavioral Decision Making will publish a special issue on a
topic that poses a paramount stumbling block across different theoretical
frameworks in the cognitive sciences, biology, economics, and beyond:
Strategy selection, or the challenge of modeling the mechanisms that
determine how humans and other agents choose among different behaviors.

Background: The Strategy Selection Problem

Decision behavior is contingent on environmental and task demands, often in
an adaptive manner. In multi-strategy approaches, such observed behavioral
changes have been characterized as a selection between 'strategies',
'heuristics', 'production rules' or 'routines' (e.g., Anderson et al., 2004;
Gigerenzer, Todd, and the ABC Research Group, 1999; Payne, Bettman &
Johnson, 1993). Alternative single process approaches like ‘evidence
accumulation models’ (e.g., Bhatia, 2013; Busemeyer & Townsend, 1993; Newell
& Lee, 2011) or ‘parallel constraint satisfaction models’ (e.g., Holyoak &
Simon, 1999; Glöckner & Betsch, 2008), conceptualize adaptivity as a change
in process parameters, such as decision thresholds or connection weights. 

                Although a considerable amount of research has been devoted
to identifying strategies and their component processes as well as their
dependencies on task and environmental factors, there is still a shortage of
precise models how strategies are selected or parameters are adjusted. What
are the meta-decision processes that allow for strategy selection or
parameter adjustment and that do not require 'homunculus' arguments? How can
they be modeled in a formal fashion? Do the models allow for predictions
rather than post-hoc interpretations of behavior? 

                The fundamental problem of strategy selection is not unique
to the decision sciences, but similar questions emerge also in other domains
of cognitive psychology and in biology, economics, and machine learning
(e.g., Seth, Prescott, & Bryson, 2011). Hence, the problem is truly
interdisciplinary, and cognitive psychology will benefit from solutions and
theories in other disciplines (and vice versa).

                Past attempts to solve the issue in decision research range
from cost-benefit analyses (Beach & Mitchell, 1978), and reinforcement
learning processes (Rieskamp & Otto, 2006) to cognitive affordances, shaped
by environmental structure (Marewski & Schooler, 2010). In the alternative
single process approaches attentional shifts and speed-accuracy tradeoffs
(Busemeyer & Townsend, 1993) or multi-layered decision processes (Glöckner &
Betsch, 2008) have been assumed. In neighboring disciplines such as biology,
economics, and machine learning, the strategy selection problem is
conceptualized in terms of action and operator selection or the setting of
weights/utitities in rational deliberation. How do these different modeling
approaches relate to each other conceptually, which ones are superior when
it comes to predicting adaptive behavior, and what are adequate
methodological approaches to test them? Despite the cross-discplinary
prominence of the strategy selection problem, there is no consensus
regarding these and many other important theoretical and methodological
questions.     

Aims of the Special Issue

                The special issue will not only present cutting-edge
research and theoretical developments on the ‘selection challenge’, but also
present a synopsis of the various theoretical approaches and foster exchange
between them.  In doing so, the special issue aims to provide an overview of
the scholarly debates associated with this modeling challenge, and hopefully
contribute to integrate the existing approaches into an overarching
perspective

Submission Guidelines & Deadlines

Papers submitted for inclusion in the special issue should contain original
and unpublished work relevant to the strategy selection problem. While the
special issue places an emphasis on empirical (e.g., experimental or
observational) research that, ideally, makes use of formal methods (e.g.,
computer simulations and mathematical analysis), full consideration will
also be given to purely theoretical contributions and comprehensive reviews.
Manuscripts should be submitted electronically via email to one of the the
guest editors in accordance with the JBDM guidelines. All submitted papers
will be refereed for their methodological soundness, clarity of the
presented results and conclusions, and the relevance of the submission for
the special issue. The submission deadline for manuscripts is January 31st ,
2015.

A more detailed version of this call for papers can be found on the
<http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1099-0771> JBDM
website at  <http://ow.ly/xPPtm> http://ow.ly/xPPtm.  

References

Anderson, J. R., Bothell, D., Byrne, M. D., Douglass, S., Lebiere, C., &
Qin, Y. (2004). An integrated theory of the mind. Psychological Review, 111,
1036–1060.

Beach, L. R., & Mitchell, T. R. (1978). A contingency model for the
selection of decision strategies. Academy of Management Review, 3, 439–449.

Bhatia, S. (2013). Associations and the accumulation of preference.
Psychological Review, 120, 522-543.

Busemeyer, J. R., & Townsend, J. T. (1993). Decision field theory: A
dynamic-cognitive approach to decision making in an uncertain environment.
Psychological Review, 100, 432–459.

Gigerenzer, G., Todd, P. M., & the ABC Research Group. (1999). Simple
heuristics that make us smart. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Glöckner, A., & Betsch, T. (2008). Modeling option and strategy choices with
connectionist networks: Towards an integrative model of automatic and
deliberate decision making. Judgment and Decision Making, 3, 215–228.

Holyoak, K. J., & Simon, D. (1999). Bidirectional reasoning in decision
making by constraint satisfaction. Journal of Experimental Psychology:
General, 128, 3-31.

Marewski, J. N., & Schooler, L. J. (2011). Cognitive niches: An ecological
model of strategy selection. Psychological Review, 118, 393–437.

Newell, B. R., & Lee, M. (2011). The Right Tool for the Job? Comparing an
Evidence Accumulation and a Naïve Strategy - Selection Model of Decision
Making. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 24, 456–481. 

Payne, J. W., Bettman, J. R., & Johnson, E. J. (1993). The adaptive decision
maker. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Rieskamp, J., & Otto, P. E. (2006). SSL: A theory of how people learn to
select strategies. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 135,
207–236.

Seth, A. K., Prescott, T. J., & Bryson, J. J. (Eds.) (2011). Modelling
Natural Action Selection. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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