The following seminar will take place as part of the Birkbeck College,
School of Psychology, Cognitive Sciences seminar series.
All visitors are welcome
Wednesday, Novnmber 28th , 1-2pm
Room 4029, 4th floor, main building, Malet st.
Dr. Peter Ayton
City University
Title:
Hiding and Seeking are not the same
Abstract:
Rubinstein, Tversky and Heller (1997) found that subjects playing a
competitive game, where they had to hide treasure in a 1x4 array, attempted
to be unpredictable, but failed, by preferring the same non-salient
locations as seekers attempting to find the treasure. They
concluded that subjects gave little thought to their opponents responses.
In co-ordination games where subjects are asked to find each other they
succeed by picking salient locations.
We extended their design to test whether these tendencies would result in an
above chance hit rate when subjects distribute three marks in a 5x5 grid.
Asking subjects to avoid or find other subjects elicits similar responses -
even though the goals of the tasks are mutually contradictory. Asking
subjects to distribute their marks randomly, in an aesthetically pleasing
manner, or just place marks anywhere elicits similar responses.
However, hiders and seekers use different strategies; hiders' responses are
less predictable than seekers in competitive games and more predictable in
co-ordination games. Moreover experience can help but hiders and seekers
benefit differently. Although seekers who have experience of hiding are not
better than seekers with no such experience, hiders who earlier sought get
better at avoiding seekers. Experience of randomising helps both hiders and
seekers more than experience of the opposite role. We consider explanations
for, and implications of, these findings.
Information about other talks in the Cognitive Sciences series can be
obtained from the following web page:
http://www.psyc.bbk.ac.uk/research/cog_sci/seminars.html
