Heuristics and Judgment in Expert Evidence - Article Example

Topic: heuristics and Judgment in Expert Evidence Name: Registration Number: Institution: Tutor’s Name: Due Date: Thesis Statement Initial studies of literature indicates that there are two contrasting views relating to judgment decision making and the cause of flawed decision making among experts as being the biasing effects of judgmental heuristics. In an environment in which there are only a few judgmental cues available, controlled processing is subject to bias. On the contrary, expert competence in cognitive science is viewed as competence and varied from every aspect of cognitive functions. Theoretical framework has been posited that describes interplay between cognitive systems and the intuitive system sometimes referred to as the heuristic system that involves contextualized, heuristic, effective and associative processes that result into impressions. Cognitive bias is assumed to rely on effortful, decontextualized serial procedures that apply self-based methods to come up with responses while heuristic processes have been used to create interplay with cognitive processes in various ways. The interplay has been significant in organizing and explaining the results in the judgment and making decisions in literature 1. The Link between heuristics and Cognitive Bias as it relates to expert evidence The dual systems characterization of the interplay between automatic and controlled decision making procedures put more emphasis on late correction methods. In case there is no success in attaining an answer to a problem when cognitive methods are used, the processes can be adjusted to automatic processes (Sox, Higgins & Owens, 2013). However, cognitive control is also important in early selection processes where cognitive control is used in generation of goals, strategies, and metal contexts that result into qualitative alteration of the results of heuristic processes. If there is a failure in our heuristics to produce the right judgment, a cognitive bias result which refers to the tendency to make wrong conclusions based on cognitive factors. There are various relationships between heuristics and cognitive biases that have been observed during decision making processes. For example, the heuristic of illusionary correlation where a person may be predisposed to see a specific event, attributes and categories as happening together. This may be observed in a case where personal prejudices are used to create stereotypes and when events are involved, false cause and effects are seen. This results into a cognitive bias as a result of heuristic of illusionary correlation. Another relationship between heuristics and cognitive bias is observed when the heuristic overconfidence is used. This refers to a state where a person overvalues his own skills, judgment or knowledge due to their inability to realize how little they know and the influence of unreliable sources in creating information to them (Moore, 2005). This results into a cognitive bias of making poor decisions in the areas of expertise such as in medical activities. The other link between heuristics and cognitive bias is observed in hindsight bias. When a situation is looked at, it is observed that all signs and events can result into a particular outcome referred to as hindsight bias. This results when a person does not see that the signs of a difficulty are insignificant until the problems become too complex to deal with. This is because the hindsight bias impairs the ability to compare the expectations and the outcomes and hinder learning. By changing the approach of thinking about a particular problem such as the use of encoding strategies or looking for additional information before making a judgment, it is possible to change intuitions (Marcum, 2008). It is also believed that there is a correlation between cognitive abilities and superior reasoning, judgment and decision making and the existence of the link between abilities and decision making due to the argument that more competent people have cognitive abilities that enable them compute more normative decisions through logical and normative processes. For example, it has been found that when a person has a high analytic intelligence, he may have the constraint of lacking normative rationality and there is usually high complexity of normative responses and only the people who have the requisite computational competences have the abilities to compute them. There has been the argument that cognitive ability is constrained by limited working memory abilities while larger working memory abilities are important in inhibition of the right heuristics. According to recent studies, the link between decision making such as making risky choices and cognitive abilities such as numeracy, working memory and reflection have the capacity to result from variations in the types of heuristics and the space in which the problem is represented, and not the normative decision making strategies (Koehler & Harvey, 2004). In particular, according to the results of protocol analysis, there is a strong relationship between normative decisions and elaborative heuristic search processes that include visual considerations, of more diverse aspects of the variations in lottery that mediate the relationships between cognitive potentials and normative choices. It is also hypothesized that the tendency to conduct an elaborative search and representation of task environment can enable the transfer of cognitive skills that are significant to memory, strategy, adaptation and acquisition of skills. When strategic processes are used, large variations in cognitive capacities such as the capacity to control interference in memory can be attained. Heuristic processes involve encoding data before making judgments, thus enabling high reflection persons represent tasks effectively for long term memory. When encoding is done onto the long-term memory, attention resources are freed and cognitive monitoring is facilitated. This accounts for the outcome that high ability individuals are most likely to fail to make normative judgments on initial choices. 2. Problems with judgments and decision making according to behavioral sciences The focus of judgments and decision making according to behavioral sciences is that it attempts to develop a method by which people combine desires such as personal goals and beliefs such as knowledge and expectations to make the right decisions (Dwyer, 2008). Decision is the course of action taken by a person while judgment refers to components of the entire decision making process that includes assessment, estimation, inferring the events that are likely to occur and making evaluative reactions to the outcomes. A good decision is characterized by an action that ensures the desirable outcomes are maximized under idealized conditions. This has been achieved by use of an approach that identifies rationality by use of simple, undisputable rules that detect irrationality such as logical contradiction that is established by a set of beliefs that the corresponding action must be rational. Another approach used to assess a logical decision is by use of various rules and algorithms or heuristics complexes simulated within the environment. A long-term survival of decision maker is analyzed over long sequences by evaluating adaptive success of decision rules in abstractions of social and distributed-resource conditions. On the other hand, it has been found that there is certain condition that makes a decision difficult. An example of an approach that can be used to determine if a decision is difficult is by making an individual evaluation of the difficulty such as stress, strain and effort required to solve the problem by an individual (Duckworth, Iezzi & O'donohue, 2008). Difficulty of a problem can also be measured by identifying the right choice alternatives and working on the situations and conditions that result into making of few errors. Intuitive and analytic modes of thinking play a significant role in judgment and decision making. Implicit processes are usually fundamental and involve emotional reactions and can be modified by slow, incremental learning processes. Explicit processes can be optional and involve abstractions based on contexts, and are likely to be modified by brief, or one-trial, learning cases. Conscious awareness is used to designate the differences between the two forms of processes. When a process occurs outside the context of awareness, it is regarded as implicit. This requires description of some significant cognitive functions as being a function of procedures that are basically implicit: these include retrieval of memory, making familiar and similar judgments, estimating experienced frequencies and making contingency judgments. Furthermore, some decision processes are ingrained in the brain and they cannot be easily penetrated (Connolly, Hammond & Arkes, 1999). On the other hand, there is no consensus regarding the role of cognitive and social psychology in the connection between implicit and explicit processes or the right operation that create a distinction between implicit and explicit processes or operation standards that distinguish explicit and implicit aspects of responding. Hammond’s cognitive continuum framework proposes an intuition of pure analysis that involves a scale of description that involve quasi-rational combinations of the ingredient processing procedures as well as a description of various modes of processing as well as characteristics of various modes of judgment and task conditions whose goal is to enhance the effectiveness of one process rather than the other. The only thing required now is a comprehensive process model that ensures overall improvements in the performance of the cognitive tasks that are being studied that assigns specific roles to explicit and implicit modes of processing (Chapman, 2003). Within this framework, we can achieve conceptual clarity regarding the condition and relationship between the various types of processes as well as developing the right empirical procedures for studying the relationship between processes. It has been also necessary to determine methods that can be used to represent decision processes cognitively and the determinants of the representation situations and how decision processes can be comprehended, perceived or retrieved to come up with the right course of action and condition the events so that they result into the intended outcomes. It has also been necessary to establish the factors that determine the branches, contingencies and components that need to be included, the temporal extent or horizon of the tree of the outcomes and the point at which a person needs to stop looking ahead and start to reason backwards regarding the possible outcome and the expected outcome of the consequence (Sox, Higgins & Owens, 2013). Or little knowledge about the generation and representation of alternative actions is an indication that decision makers do not make deeper study of the options, although this practice may not be affected if the options selected are good ones. A lot of information is available about the consequences of alternative decision and problems representation such as gains and losses of frames and summary as well as unpacked event descriptions compared with the understanding of frames of decision and description of events or the effects of these variations on evaluations and judgments during times of uncertainties. This condition requires the use of cognitive principles and procedures during the process of describing knowledge representations. Some of the ideas that are important in decision making have been suggested by economists, game theorists and economic scientists. An example of a reason for connection between research and decision making is as a result of normative theories in economics and statistics and little focus on problem solving, reasoning, use of language or cognitive functions is that cognitive methods do not provide the correct development and intensiveness of labor compared with the methods for testing algebraic process models. 3. Relationship of judgments and decision making to expert medical opinion The relationship between judgment and decision making are classified based on the ability of a medical practitioner to make the right decision such as novices, intermediates and experts. Models are used to determine the relationships between judgments and decision making and explain why novices show sensitivity to constraints such as time constraints that are not demonstrated by experts. By use of these models, it is possible to understand and explain the differences in various levels of decision making as well as prediction of circumstances under which certain forms of decisions will occur (Moore, 2005. The relationship between judgment makings should be increasing monotonically in performance and a decrease in decision time as the level of expertise increases. According to the findings from previously developed models, it has been found that experts have shown high performance by making the right decisions and taking shorter times to make decisions compared to either intermediates or novices. On the other hand, intermediates have been observed to take a longer time than experts but shorter time than novices and their decisions are more highly performing, better and quicker compared to the decisions of the novices. The novices on the other hand have been observed to show low capacity to make accurate decisions as well as taking the longest times to make a decision. The difference between novices, intermediates and experts results from mental sensations that underlie their decisions. According to an empirical research on novices and experts, it has been suggested that networks of experts contain more information compared to those of intermediates which in turn contain more cues than those of novices. There is also a strong relationship between cues in experts’ networks while networks of intermediates and novices do not have the cues (Marcum, 2008). Furthermore, the cues of experts and intermediates contain cues with different options, while those of novices are in support of a single option. Furthermore, due to differences in background information and experience, there is a variation of the initial cue between the groups. Based on the accuracy of the initial cue validity, it is possible for intermediates to make the correct decision at a fast rate, but also performance that requires the recall of a single information can be considerably good among intermediates due to their knowledge of the domain to structure information, but they do not have a developed interrelationship in the links between cues. The knowledge base of intermediates is also based on theoretical information that has not been put to practice or experience-based knowledge. Under particular conditions for instance, when a difficulty is presented adequately by means of daily knowledge, it might result into low performance even when compared with the novices or lay people. The role of experts on the other hand should involve storage of information in a chunked form because it might result into worse performance under a recall of single units. This disadvantage, is however advantageous in the case where time constraints are involved (Koehler & Harvey, 2004). As a result of interdependence of cues, experts might be in a position to process large amounts of information at a particular time period while novices and intermediates need to be provided with a few problems to handle at a particular time. Chunking information as in the case of experts might be effective in the case of parallel constraint satisfaction that processes analogously to the basic level malleability view in categories. It has been suggested that there might be a shift in categorization to a more specific level without a loss in privileged status. These shifts are dependent on the knowledge obtained, the goals and the areas and thus enable various forms of categorization in various circumstances. Generally, this relationship is important and should be understood in medical practice because it ensures professionals are assigned to medical tasks that they are competent in performing based on their level of expertise and ability to make sound judgments, ability to think critically and make clinical judgments and their levels of experience. This is based on the health professional’s continual learning, accountability, ability to make independent decisions and their levels of creativity. This ensures cases of wrong decisions are avoided and patients are assured of the safety when certain types of decisions are made. 4. References Chapman, G. B. 2003. Decision making in health care: theory, psychology and applications. Cambridge [u.a.], Cambridge Univ. Press. Connolly, T., Hammond, K. R., & Arkes, H. R. 1999. Judgment and decision making: an interdisciplinary reader. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Duckworth, M. P., Iezzi, A., & O'donohue, W. T. 2008. Motor vehicle collisions medical, psychosocial, and legal consequences. Amsterdam, Elsevier/Academic. Dwyer, D. M. 2008. The judicial assessment of expert evidence. Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press. Koehler, D. J., & Harvey, N. 2004. Blackwell handbook of judgment and decision making. Oxford, UK, Blackwell Pub. Marcum, J. A. 2008. An introductory philosophy of medicine: humanizing modern medicine. [Dordrecht], Springer. Moore, D. A. 2005. Conflicts of interest: challenges and solutions in business, law, medicine, and public policy. Cambridge [u.a.], Cambridge Univ. Press. Sox, H. C., Higgins, M. C., & Owens, D. K. 2013. Medical decision making. Chichester, West Sussex, UK, Wiley-Blackwell. Read More