Comprehension and Analysis of Information in Text. II Decision Making with Texts.
Abstract
Decision making based on information in texts was studied in a laboratory analogue of a complex, natural, information-analytic domain. Subjects acting as stock brokers acquired a conjunctive decision rule for predicting the market performance of a fictitious stock. Subjects read quarterly reports containing information on six market-information categories, of which only two were relevant to correct decisions. Decision performance differentiated between Learners (subjects who discovered the relevant categories) and Nonlearners. Hypothesis selection behavior was similar to that reported with simpler concept learning problems. The category recall pattern reflected hypothesis selection, decision behavior, and subjects' overall category identification strategies. Further, these data were congruent with a model of text comprehension. Effective decision making in this task was viewed as the ability to acquire an appropriate control schema to guide comprehension and analysis of complex, often unreliable text inputs. (Author)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Dec 01, 1979
- Accession Number
- ADA083973
Entities
People
- Ely Kozminsky
- Lyle E. Bourne Jr.
- Paul Coren
- Walter Kintsch
Organizations
- University of Colorado Boulder