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Decision Making Of An Option From A Set Of Alternatives Essay

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chapter{Introduction} The central topic of this dissertation is decision making: the selection of an option from a set of alternatives. Some real life examples include deciding what to buy at the supermarket, or deciding whether a stimulus represents a threat or not. In these situations, the decision maker accumulates evidence for each alternative until a decision is made in favour of one option. In particular, we are interested in the cognitive processes underlying a decision and for the sake of simplicity, especially mathematical simplicity, we focus on a particular type of decision: choosing one alternative from a set of two alternatives. In order to investigate the cognitive processes underlying decision making, researchers can use computational models of decision making. Such models formalise mathematically the contribution of each single process underlying a choice. In this dissertation, we show the benefits of applying computational models: first, differently from verbal theories, computational models do not rely on logical inference, but allow a better clarity and completeness, and make quantitative predictions about theories by simulating the cognitive process itself through a computer program. Second, a feature of computational models is that of serendipity and emergence citep{o2000computational}, meaning that computational models allow a new understanding of phenomena that are not accessible otherwise. The goal of this first chapter is to provide an

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