Complex Cognition

This book explains the role of human behavior research, from both a historical and modern perspective, in improving objective, measurable performance outcomes to include safety, strategic decision making, and organizational performance. The book builds upon empirically supported foundations of human cognition, but with a focus on applying this knowledge in a manner that can improve human decision-making to enhance safety and performance. It includes explanations of how the human mind processes information, including differences in novice versus expert information processing, and tools to combat various cognitive biases. Explained within the framework of complex adaptive systems, this book builds upon resources developed through the author’s years of combined applied research and graduate teaching and includes chapters on the roles of uncertainty and complexity within scientific research. Finally, the book offers tools that are rooted in empirical research and demonstrated within the context of contemporary, real-world scenarios, with a focus on improving organizational effectiveness through improved strategic decision making and the development of learning cultures within organizations.

Higher cognition and consciousness became the objective of intensive scientific studiesandoftenspiriteddebatesinthe pastdecades.The brain has immenselyc- plex structure and functionality, while our understanding of its operationis yet in its infancy. Some investigators declare that higher-level cognition and consciousness are ultimately beyond the realms of human scienti?c understanding and reasoning, and research into these areas is a futile exercise.

This book studies social phenomena in a new way, by making judicious use of computer technology. The book addresses the entire spectrum of classic studies in social science, from experiments to the computational models, with a multidisciplinary approach. The book is suitable for those who want to get a picture of what it means to do social research today, and also to get an indication of the major open issues. The book is connected to a database of code for simulations, experimental data and allows to activate a subscription to a teaching tool using NetLogo, a programming language widely used in the social studies. The authors are researchers with first-hand experience research projects, both basic and applied. The work will be useful for those who want to understand more of the social, economic and political phenomena via computer applications.

"It is not thought as such that can move anything, but thought which is for the sake of something and is practical." This discerning insight, which dates back more than 2000years to Aristotle, seems to have been ignored by most psycholo­ gists. For more than 40years theories of human action have assumed that cogni­ tion and action are merely two sides of the same coin. Approaches as different as S-O-R behaviorism,social learning theory, consistency theories,and expectancy­ value theories of motivation and decision making have one thing in common: they all assume that "thought (or any other type of cognition) can move any­ thing," that there is a direct path from cognition to behavior. In recent years, we have become more and more aware of the complexities in­ volved in the relationship between cognition and behavior. People do not always do what they intend to do. Aside from several nonpsychological factors capable of reducing cognition-behavior consistency, there seems to be a set of complex psychological mechanisms which intervene between action-related cognitions, such as beliefs, expectancies, values, and intentions,and the enactment of the be­ havior suggested by those cognitions. In our recent research we have focused on volitional mechanismus which presumably enhance cognition-behavior consistency by supporting the main­ tenance of activated intentions and prevent them from being pushed aside by competing action tendencies.

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The first edition of this book has found great interest among scientists and en­ gineers dealing with pattern recognition and among psychologists working on psychophysics or Gestalt psychology. This book also proved highly useful for graduate students of informatics. The concept of the synergetic computer offers an important alternative to the by now more traditional neural nets. I just mention a few advantages: There are no ghost states so that time-consuming methods such as simulated annealing can be avoided; the synaptic strengths are explicitly determined by the prototype patterns to be stored, but they can equally well be learned, and the learning procedure allows a classification. Also a precise meaning and function can be attributed to "hidden variables".