Behind the Scenes of Decision Making:

Transcription

1 Behind the Scenes of Decision Making: Heuristics, Black Swans and Invisible Gorillas Prof Claudine Storbeck & Dr Bianca Birdsey The Centre for Deaf Studies HI HOPES Early Intervention Programme University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, SA

2 Claudine Storbeck & Bianca Birdsey How Do we really make decisions in this field?

3 Claudine Storbeck & Bianca Birdsey Do we really make decisions in this field?

4 First Impressions & beyond

5 4 x 3 10 x 8 7 x 7 5 x 6

6 System 1: Automatic, quick & without much mental effort at all... HEURISTIC PROCESSING System2: Significant mental effort & Complex computations...systematic PROCESSING

7 An approach to problem solving and decision making, using cognitive short cuts which are automatic Fast & Intuitive, often subconscious process Used in everyday decision making, judgments, stereotypes and predictions WHY? Economical, reduces cognitive load

8 Heuristics

9 The ease of recall The most outstanding available memory - a unique/extreme event Likelihood of re-occurance is then overestimated Example: CI Risk / CI Benefit Can also lead to illusionary correlation Deaf children in schools for the Deaf/ poor education. Therfor SL as medium of education gives poor education

10 When a conclusion or decision is made using an estimate based on a known anchor eg. The 1 st person Heuristic becomes the anchor Over confidence of an estimate. Good questions to consider - who is the 1st person the family engages with etc

11 When a characteristic of the prototype is seen as a generalised characteristic of a larger group or category eg. And this leads to overestimating of rare qualities and underestimation of more common qualities which is known as base-rate falacy. Ignorance of sample size eg. Small sample size often distorts the representation of any results and the probability of the future events that they allude to... Sampling theory - caution for over generalised research

12 Something that requires a greater investment of time / money/ effort is seen as more valuable and superior o Equipment & products o Methodology o School choices

13 The Framing effect present information in different ways (10% major complications or 90% is totally uneventful) The Halo effect tendency to like or dislike something/ some person (including things not observed).. Consider Sam & Adam

14 Sam: Intelligent, Industrious, impulsive, critical, stubborn, envious Adam: Envious, stubborn, critical, impulsive, industrious, intelligent

15 Cognitive error and Biases Can we really be unbiased Early Interventionists

16 Cognitive Errors or Bias Blind spot Bias Dunning Kruger Bias Illusion of control

17 The human brain is capable of failing to notice something they were not expecting to see Cognitive capture

18 Rara avis in terris nigroque similisa cygne A bird as rare as a black swan Latin poet - Juvenal

19 We can be blind to the obvious We can be blind to our blindness What we don't know is far more relevant than what we do know Our world is dominated by the extreme, the unknown and The highly improbable

20 The theory explores a fascinating triplet 1. Rare event = outlier 2. Extreme impact 3. Retrospective rationalisation The theory is not to teach us how to predict, but to recognise black swans (both positive and negative)

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22 Prof Claudine Storbeck & Dr Bianca Birdsey The Centre for Deaf Studies University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, SA