An Evaluation of Human Act Generation Performance.
Abstract
A series of experiments addressed the adequacy of act generation performance, an important precursor to problem structuring. Each of two decision problems was studied by a series of three experiments. In the first experiment, subjects were given a realistic decision problem and asked to respond with any act occurring to them. In the second experiment, the acts suggested were evaluated by different subjects for feasibility. In a third experiment, additional subjects estimated the utility of the acts judged feasible. The act generation performance of subjects was evaluated using two techniques. First, a decision tree was generated by the experimenters by combining the acts suggested by all subjects. The decision tree generated by each subject was compared with the experimenter-generated tree. It was found that subjects failed to generate important limbs and branches of the group decision tree. Second, the quality of the trees generated by individual subjects was evaluated by an opportunity loss calculation. This calculation provided an estimate of the potential cost of failing to generate limbs and branches of the decision tree. The opportunity loss analysis suggested that the failure to generate a complete tree could be costly. (Author)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Aug 15, 1981
- Accession Number
- ADA103637
Entities
People
- Carol Manning
- Charles F. Gettys
- Jeff T. Casey
Organizations
- University of Oklahoma