This 600 square-foot computer-based laboratory includes five sound-attenuated cubicles devoted to data collection, a large workroom for data analysis and lab meetings, and an office for research associates. The computers, one per cubicle, two in the workroom, and two in the office are networked, so that data files can be easily transferred to the powerful workroom computers for statistical analysis and mathematical modeling. Conduits between the cubicles provide the opportunity to inter-connect additional equipment in the cubicles as necessary. A substantial journal collection housed in the workroom facilitates the writing of articles and grant proposals.

Our research, with support from the National Science Foundation, is in the area of behavioral judgment and decision theory, which, in turn, falls within the interdisciplinary boundaries of decision science and cognitive science. The particular questions we currently are investigating are (1) how people utilize their memory or knowledge base to form degrees of confidence that statements or forecasts are true or false, (2) how they translate those feelings of confidence into overt numerical or linguistic expressions, (3) how they learn to more accurately communicate their judgments to others, and (4) how to develop system to improve forecasts by translating from one person’s lexicon of uncertainty to another’s or by combining judgments of multiple experts.

The research is of both practical and theoretical interest. On a theoretical level, we are contributing to the knowledge of how people process uncertain information, as well as how they behave and communicate in the face of uncertainty. On a practical level, we are developing methods for improving and communicating judgments that may be applied in such as areas as medical or legal decision making, marketing research, weather forecasting, and risk assessment, among others.