Information Processing Effort Research Articles

Introduction to Special Thematic Issue, part 2 "Microsaccades: Empirical Research and Methodological Advances“

Introduction to Special Thematic Issue, part 2 "Microsaccades: Empirical Research and Methodological Advances“

A qualitative research framework for the design of user-centered displays of explanations for machine learning model predictions in healthcare

BackgroundThere is an increasing interest in clinical prediction tools that can achieve high prediction accuracy and provide explanations of the factors leading to increased risk of adverse outcomes. However, approaches to explaining complex machine learning (ML) models are rarely informed by end-user needs and user evaluations of model interpretability are lacking in the healthcare domain. We used extended revisions of previously-published theoretical frameworks to propose a framework for the design of user-centered displays of explanations. This new framework served as the basis for qualitative inquiries and design review sessions with critical care nurses and physicians that informed the design of a user-centered explanation display for an ML-based prediction tool.MethodsWe used our framework to propose explanation displays for predictions from a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) in-hospital mortality risk model. Proposed displays were based on a model-agnostic, instance-level explanation approach based on feature influence, as determined by Shapley values. Focus group sessions solicited critical care provider feedback on the proposed displays, which were then revised accordingly.ResultsThe proposed displays were perceived as useful tools in assessing model predictions. However, specific explanation goals and information needs varied by clinical role and level of predictive modeling knowledge. Providers preferred explanation displays that required less information processing effort and could support the information needs of a variety of users. Providing supporting information to assist in interpretation was seen as critical for fostering provider understanding and acceptance of the predictions and explanations. The user-centered explanation display for the PICU in-hospital mortality risk model incorporated elements from the initial displays along with enhancements suggested by providers.ConclusionsWe proposed a framework for the design of user-centered displays of explanations for ML models. We used the proposed framework to motivate the design of a user-centered display of an explanation for predictions from a PICU in-hospital mortality risk model. Positive feedback from focus group participants provides preliminary support for the use of model-agnostic, instance-level explanations of feature influence as an approach to understand ML model predictions in healthcare and advances the discussion on how to effectively communicate ML model information to healthcare providers.

Analyzing Abstraction and Hierarchical Decision-Making in Absolute Identification by Information-Theoretic Bounded Rationality.

In the face of limited computational resources, bounded rational decision theory predicts that information-processing should be concentrated on actions that make a significant contribution in terms of the utility achieved. Accordingly, information-processing can be simplified by choosing stereotypic actions that lead to satisfactory performance over a range of different inputs rather than choosing a specific action for each input. Such a set of similar inputs with similar action responses would then correspond to an abstraction that can be harnessed with possibly negligible loss in utility, but with potentially considerable savings in information-processing effort. Here we test this prediction in an identification task, where human subjects were asked to estimate the roundness of ellipses varying from a straight line to a perfect circle. Crucially, when reporting their estimates, subjects could choose between three different levels of precision corresponding to three levels of abstraction in a decision-making hierarchy. To induce changes in level selection, we manipulated the information-processing resources available at the perceptual and action stages by varying the difficulty of identifying the stimulus and by enforcing different response times in the action stage. In line with theoretical predictions, we find that subjects adapt their abstraction level depending on the available resources. We compare subjects' behavior to the maximum efficiency predicated by the bounded rational decision-making model and investigate possible sources of inefficiency.

Information Needs for a Purchase of Fairtrade Coffee

This research investigates what information German Fairtrade coffee consumers search for during pre-purchase information seeking and to what extent information is retrieved. Furthermore, the sequence of the information search as well as the degree of cognitive involvement is highlighted. The role of labeling, the importance of additional ethical information and its quality in terms of concreteness as well as the importance of product price and organic origin are addressed. A set of information relevant to Fairtrade consumers was tested by means of the Information Display Matrix (IDM) method with 389 Fairtrade consumers. Results show that prior to purchase, information on product packages plays an important role and is retrieved rather extensively, but search strategies that reduce the information processing effort are applied as well. Furthermore, general information is preferred over specific information. Results of two regression analyses indicate that purchase decisions are related to search behavior variables rather than to socio-demographic variables and purchase motives. In order to match product information with consumers’ needs, marketers should offer information that is reduced to the central aspects of Fairtrade.

Information elaboration and team performance: Examining the psychological origins and environmental contingencies

Information elaboration enables functionally diverse teams to transform their breadth of knowledge resources into actionable solutions to complex problems. The current study advances information elaboration theory and research in two ways. First, we identify how team ability and social motivation composition characteristics provide the psychological origins of complex information processing efforts. Second, we identify environmental turbulence as an important boundary condition, clarifying when information elaboration benefits team performance and when it does not. These ideas were tested in a sample of 4-person self-managed teams (N=68) which were functionally diverse and performed a cooperative strategic decision-making task. Results indicate that cognitive ability equips teams with the “can do” ability for complex elaboration efforts through emergent team mental models, whereas low preferences for self-reliance provide the “will do” motivation for in-depth information exchange through collective leadership. In turn, teams benefited from information elaboration in turbulent but not stable environments.

A scare in the OR highlights value of systems engineering.

A scare in the OR highlights value of systems engineering.

Contractual Complexity and the Cognitive Load of R&D Alliance Contracts

We offer a new perspective on measuring the complexity of inter-firm contracts. We define complex contracts as those contracts that contain many elements (clauses) with a relatively large number of interdependencies that also impose a significant cognitive load upon contract parties. Previous studies on contractual complexity employ objective measures such as the number of pages, the amount of kilobytes or the number of provisions to measure this complexity. Following some suggestions in the literature, we argue that the degree to which a contract imposes a cognitive load upon contract parties should be taken as another important dimension of contractual complexity. We develop a conceptual model of the complexity of contracts using a multidimensional perspective where both objective and subjective dimensions are taken into account. Our empirical analysis combines a sample of nearly 400 R&D alliance contracts in the biopharmaceutical industry with a measurement of the cognitive load of these contracts. Our findings show that quantitative, objective measures of complexity, such as length, and objective as well as subjective elements of the cognitive load of contracts, i.e. the information processing effort that contractual parties have to make, do indeed measure different aspects of contractual complexity.

Processing of Apparel Advertisements: Application and Extension of Elaboration Likelihood Model

This is an investigation of how consumers use the elements of an apparel advertisement to develop their attitudes toward an advertised product. It examined whether participants' involvement level (high or low) and the product type (utilitarian jacket or expressive jacket) influence the ways consumers process a message argument (strong or weak) and background picture (unattractive or attractive) in an apparel advertisement. Using the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), an experimental study was conducted to examine information processing activities and attitude formation. Participants with a high level of involvement devoted more information processing efforts to specific elements of the advertisement - verbal messages for the utilitarian product and pictorial information for the expressive product - than participants with a low level of involvement. As a result, when the level of involvement was high, the message argument influenced the consumer's attitude toward the utilitarian product, whereas the background picture influenced attitudes toward the expressive product. In this paper, we discuss the applicability of ELM and its extension in explaining attitudes toward an apparel product.

The MBTI and Social Information Processing: An Incremental Validity Study

The ability of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI; Myers & McCaulley, 1985) to predict performance on social cognitive tasks tapping information processing effort was assessed. Judgment and intuition interacted to predict amount of attributional adjustment on a dispositional attribution task. The MBTI scales predicted processing above and beyond measures of the five factors, rational-experiential preferences, and causal uncertainty. The relevance of these results for interpretation of the MBTI indexes is discussed.

Reducing Respondent Burden, Information Processing Effort, and Incomprehensibility in Stated-Preference Surveys: Principles and Properties of the Pairwise Design Strategy

The validity of stated-preference and choice models is strongly influenced by the ability of the respondents to capture and understand the experimental task, which in turn is a function of the complexity of the attribute profiles and the degree to which the respondents can relate to the choice options. Several measures on respondent burden, information processing effort, and incomprehensibility of stated-preference experiments are developed. The applicability of the measures is demonstrated in a comparison of the pairwise approach with traditional design strategies.

An Experimental Investigation Of The Relationship Between Decision Makers, Decision Aids and Decision Making Effort

AbstractThis paper reports the results of two laboratory experiments designed to assess the impact of decision aid use on effort expenditures by decision makers. The traditional assumption in the decision support systems (DSS) literature is that if decision makers are provided with expanded processing capabilities they will use them to analyze problems in more depth and as a result make better decisions. Empirical studies investigating the relationship between DSS and decision quality have not borne this out. The explanation for such outcomes could be found in behavioral decision making theories. The literature on behavioral decision making indicates that the conservation of effort may be more important than increased decision quality in some cases. If this is so, then the use of a decision aid may result in effort savings but not improved decision performance. The two experiments reported here compare the information processing effort expended by users of a decision aid designed to support preferential c...

Toward intelligent product information systems for consumers

Telecommunication, video, and artificial intelligence technologies are supporting new product information systems capable of an increasingly intelligent dialog with consumers. The success of these new systems, just as with all past systems, depends on consumers' perceiving more benefits than costs from using them. Many of the new sophisticated systems may not succeed, and some have already failed, because their benefits cannot be made to exceed their costs. Especially important are nonmonetary costs like information processing effort and frustrating or tedious use experiences. The impact of the new technologies on information providers is discussed, as is the role of consumer-oriented policy makers in influencing the development of new product information systems.

Social security administration's progress in modernizing its computer operations

This review of the Social Security Administration's information processing efforts by the GAO offers an interesting update to some of the earlier articles that appeared in SOS about Social Security. It appears from the report that progress is being made. However, there have been some changes in a plan that was to result in major improvements in systems at SSA. In particular, the GAO has found the SS Administration does not plan to document existing systems before proceeding with the design of new applications. The investigators are concerned that it will be difficult to develop good specifications if present designs are not documented. On the side of the Administration is the fact that tremendous resources are needed to document existing systems that may be mostly abandoned when new ones are implemented. This discussion of software engineering and design philosophy mirrors what is happening in other organizations faced with the need to make major redesigns of existing applications.

Micro- and macrodevelopmental changes in language acquisition and other representational systems

In this paper, it will be argued that each time a procedure in a representational system is functioning adequately and automatically, the child steps up to a metaprocedural level and considers the procedure as a unit in its own right. Data will be drawn from microdevelopment in children's creation of external memory devices (i.e., changes in representation of a spatial task during a one hour's session) as well as from macrodevelopment in language acquisition (i.e., changes occurring over age in a study of nominal determiners, pronouns and gender markers). These two aspects of development of representational systems are examined with respect to the spontaneous passage from concrete reference to abstract systems, from idiosyncratic to conventional notations, from redundant to economic marking, from unifunctional to plurifunctional meaningful units. These micro- and macrodevelopmental changes take place in a spontaneous fashion despite the fact that the child's earlier system is adequate for successfully conveying the information required. A discussion will be made of the way in which children tend to indicate externally, by unifunctional markers, information which was implicit in their earlier use of an adult-like system. They appear to be striving for the delicate balance between encoding and decoding efforts, ultimately leading to a felicitous representational system. Metaprocedural behavior is hypothesized to act as a control mechanism in the striving for this delicate balance of information content and information processing effort. It also appears to act as a control mechanism for the interprocedural organization of what was previously a plethora of juxtaposed, unconnected procedures yielding superficially analogous behavior. The stepping-up to a metaprocedural level seems to occur each time the child has a handle on his currently functioning, goal-oriented system. This enables the child to treat the system, or procedures which are part thereof, as units functioning in their own right. Thus there appears to be a deep-rooted psychological tendency for a representational tool which functions well procedurally to become subsequently a problem-space per se.

Micro‐ and Macrodevelopmental Changes in Language Acquisition and Other Representational Systems*

In this paper, it will be argued that each time a procedure in a representational system is functioning adequately and automatically, the child steps up to a metaprocedural level and considers the procedure as a unit in its own right. Data will be drawn from microdevelopment in children's creation of external memory devices (i.e., changes in representation of a spatial task during a one hour's session) as well as from macrodevelopment in language acquisition (i.e., changes occurring over age in a study of nominal determiners, pronouns and gender markers). These two aspects of development of representational systems are examined with respect to the spontaneous passage from concrete reference to abstract systems, from idiosyncratic to conventional notations, from redundant to economic marking, from unifunctional to plurifunctional meaningful units. These micro‐ and manodevelopmental changes take place in a spontaneous fashion despite the fact that the child's earlier system is adequate for successfully conveying the information required. A discussion will be made of the way in which children tend to indicate externally, by unifunctional markers, information which was implicit in their earlier use of an adult‐like system. They appear to be striving for the delicate balance between encoding and decoding efforts, ultimately leading to a felicitous representational system. Metaprocedural behavior is hypothesized to act as a control mechanism in the striving for this delicate balance of information content and information processing effort. It also appears to act as a control mechanism for the interprocedural organizotion of what was previously a plethora of juxtaposed, unconnected procedures yielding superficially analogous behavior. The stepping‐up to a metaprocedural level seems to occur each time the child has a handle on his currently functioning, goal‐oriented system. This enables the child to treat the system, or procedures which are part thereof, as units functioning in their own right. Thus there appears to be a deep‐rooted psychological tendency for a representational tool which functions well procedurally to become subsequently a problem‐space per se.