Human Factors in Transportation

Decision Making Processes

Please read each of the assigned articles and prepare your responses to these class and exam preparation questions.

Article 1

1. Describe two problems in identifying decision errors in naturalistic contexts.

2. Discuss the concept of naturalistic decision making.

3. Explain the concept of "satisficing decisions".

4. What assumptions are built into normative theory?

5. What are the components of situation assessment?

6. Discuss several types of situation assessment error.

7. Discuss several types of course of action error.

8. Discuss the role of ambiguity as a contributor to decision error.

9. Explain how underestimating risk can contribute to decision error.

10. Discuss how goal conflicts can lead to decision error.

Article 2

1. Discuss the concept of "recognition-primed decision making" (RPD).

2. Explain how experiences affect the decision-making process.

3. Explain the concept of cognitive maps.

4. Discuss differences between novices and experts relative to seeking additional information.

5. Discuss differences between novices and experts relevant to the qualifications of advisors.

6. Discuss how novices tended to rely on irrelevant factors

Article 3

1. Explain why experts are able to make faster diagnoses than novices.

2. Explain how increased experience may actually worsen the decision-making process.

3. Discuss the relationship between flight experience and the ability to diagnose problems.

4. Discuss the relationship between flight experience and the ability to generate and implement solutions

Article 4

1. Discuss the two major components of the decision making process.

2. Explain how the single channel, storage and retrieval process can lead to potential errors.

3. Discuss the factors that can limit the efficiency of decision making.

4. Explain why the development of more complex judgment skills occurs later in flight training.

Article 5

1. Discuss the three general characteristics that define the decision-making task.

2. Describe the process of cue-seeking in regard to situation assessment.

3. Explain how stress can lead to a tunneling of attention.

4. Explain how pilots in crisis might have a bias toward salience.

5. Explain how the confirmation bias works.

6. Explain the process of hypothesis formulation and testing.

7. What is the availability heuristic?

8. Explain the relationship between the "as if" heuristic and cue reliability.

9. Explain how the concept of highest expected utility relates to choosing a course of action.

10. Explain how utility and probability together define risk.

11. Discuss to what degree people are able to assess the probability of different outcomes.

12. Discuss the relationship between choosing a course of action when the outcomes are expressed as losses versus when they are expressed as gains.

13. Discuss the prevailing abilities of people to forecast the future.

Article 6

1. Explain why optimal decisions do not always lead to desirable outcomes.

2. Discuss various assumptions made in models of optimal decision making.

3. Explain how decision makers tend to rely more on heuristics than on probability and statistics.

4. Explain how representativeness is a factor in predicting future events.

5. Review the availability rule.