The Attentional Learning Trap and How to Avoid It.

Bibtex entry:

@inproceedings{rich2015attentional,
	abstract = {People often make repeated decisions from experience. In such scenarios, persistent biases of choice can develop, most notably the "hot stove effect" (Denrell & March, 2001) in which a prospect that is mistakenly believed to be negative is avoided and thus belief-correcting information is never obtained. In the existing literature, the hot stove effect is generally thought of as developing through interaction with a single, stochastic prospect. Here, we show how a similar bias can develop due to people's tendency to selectively attend to a subset of features during categorization. We first explore the bias through model simulation, then report on an experiment in which we find evidence of a decisional bias linked to selective attention. Finally, we use these computational models to design novel interventions to "de-bias" decision-makers, some of which may have practical application.},
	address = {Austin, TX},
	author = {Rich, A.S. and Gureckis, T.M.},
	booktitle = {Proceedings of the 37th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society},
	editor = {Noelle, D.C. and Dale, R. and Warlaumont, A.S. and Yoshimi, J. and Matlock, T. and Jennings, C.D. and Maglio, P.P.},
	publisher = {Cognitive Science Society},
	title = {The Attentional Learning Trap and How to Avoid It.},
	year = {2015}}

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