A new task format for investigating information search and organization in multiattribute decisions

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Decision Science
• Human-Computer Interaction

Background:

• Multiattribute decision research typically uses pre-organized information, simplifying strategy application.
• Everyday decisions often involve unstructured information requiring both search and organization.
• Subjective information organization has been largely overlooked due to methodological limitations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To address the neglect of subjective information organization in decision research.
• To introduce a novel, objective, and automated method for assessing information organization.
• To develop a task format and metric (organization index, OI) comparable to existing strategy indices (SI).

Main Methods:

• Development of a new experimental task format for decision-making scenarios.
• Introduction of an organization index (OI) for objective and automated assessment of subjective information organization.
• Conducting a simulation study to compare the OI with the strategy index (SI).
• Validation experiment using instructed strategy use in multicue inference tasks.

Main Results:

• The organization index (OI) was developed for objective and automated assessment.
• Simulation results indicated the OI has a similar distribution to the strategy index (SI) but is largely independent.
• The validation experiment demonstrated the task's utility in tracing decision processes.

Conclusions:

• The new task format and OI effectively address methodological issues in assessing subjective information organization.
• The OI provides an objective measure comparable to the SI, advancing decision research.
• This approach facilitates a deeper understanding of information processing in complex decision-making and multicue inference.