Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE240100883
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$452,777.00
Summary
The cognitive science of farsighted deliberation. Many fundamental decisions in life require us to deliberate about sooner versus later consequences. This cognitive psychology project aims to determine how the capacities that enable people to think about the future (prospection) and reflect on their own thinking (metacognition) influence how they manage such decisions. By using innovative methods, this project is expected to advance our understanding of future-oriented cognition across the lifes ....The cognitive science of farsighted deliberation. Many fundamental decisions in life require us to deliberate about sooner versus later consequences. This cognitive psychology project aims to determine how the capacities that enable people to think about the future (prospection) and reflect on their own thinking (metacognition) influence how they manage such decisions. By using innovative methods, this project is expected to advance our understanding of future-oriented cognition across the lifespan. Expected outcomes include new knowledge about how people deliberate through important everyday decisions. This should provide significant benefits by laying the foundation for improving effective choices about the future.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE160101137
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$373,536.00
Summary
The whole is greater than its parts: Improving rail safety through teamwork. This project seeks to develop a train driving risk model that includes human factors, to enable rail organisations to better identify and mitigate safety risks. Train driving is a cognitively demanding task in which errors can quickly lead to catastrophic consequences. Signals passed at danger (SPADs) occur when a train goes past a red light. Despite significant investment in better signalling and communications infrast ....The whole is greater than its parts: Improving rail safety through teamwork. This project seeks to develop a train driving risk model that includes human factors, to enable rail organisations to better identify and mitigate safety risks. Train driving is a cognitively demanding task in which errors can quickly lead to catastrophic consequences. Signals passed at danger (SPADs) occur when a train goes past a red light. Despite significant investment in better signalling and communications infrastructure, SPAD rates remain unacceptably high and are projected to rise. SPAD risk is currently managed with a retrospective approach that fails to consider non-technical human factors such as time pressure, workload and team communications. By including non-technical dimensions, this project seeks to develop a comprehensive model to explain and prevent SPADs.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE230101131
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$458,039.00
Summary
Understanding drivers and deterrents of Australia's illicit tobacco market. As Australia implements policies that reduce the availability and affordability of tobacco, demand for illicit tobacco is likely to grow. This research aims to generate new knowledge about the drivers and deterrents of demand for illicit tobacco through three inter-related projects. Expected outcomes include a comprehensive understanding of factors influencing Australians’ demand for illicit tobacco, and expert-informed ....Understanding drivers and deterrents of Australia's illicit tobacco market. As Australia implements policies that reduce the availability and affordability of tobacco, demand for illicit tobacco is likely to grow. This research aims to generate new knowledge about the drivers and deterrents of demand for illicit tobacco through three inter-related projects. Expected outcomes include a comprehensive understanding of factors influencing Australians’ demand for illicit tobacco, and expert-informed policy recommendations to reduce demand for and deter use of illicit tobacco. With no substantive Australian research on this topic for more than 15 years, this research will be essential to reduce the impacts of the illicit tobacco market, including substantial losses in tax revenue and the funding of organised crime.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE240100616
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$411,500.00
Summary
Sustained innovations to promote healthier food in the retail environment. This project aims to provide empirical evidence to drive sustained retailer change in favour of healthier food offerings. Australian food environments drive unhealthy diets and are a major cause of social, productivity and wellbeing loss. Using implementation science methods applied to rigorous real-world trials and policy collaborations, the project will test the effectiveness of innovative methods for sustaining organis ....Sustained innovations to promote healthier food in the retail environment. This project aims to provide empirical evidence to drive sustained retailer change in favour of healthier food offerings. Australian food environments drive unhealthy diets and are a major cause of social, productivity and wellbeing loss. Using implementation science methods applied to rigorous real-world trials and policy collaborations, the project will test the effectiveness of innovative methods for sustaining organisational change across a range of retail settings. Outcomes would deliver significant benefits by enabling retailers, governments, and public health advocates nationally and internationally to make the lasting changes to retail environments needed to improve productivity and population wellbeing.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE200100692
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$417,842.00
Summary
Stopping in the Real World: Cognitive Architectures for Selective Stopping. Response inhibition is the ability to stop actions that are in progress but become no longer appropriate, such as halting an order to launch a missile strike when a civilian vehicle is detected. The project focuses on people’s ability to either stop all planned actions or selectively stop some actions while allowing others to occur. The goal is to develop methodology to reliably measure the time it takes to stop actions, ....Stopping in the Real World: Cognitive Architectures for Selective Stopping. Response inhibition is the ability to stop actions that are in progress but become no longer appropriate, such as halting an order to launch a missile strike when a civilian vehicle is detected. The project focuses on people’s ability to either stop all planned actions or selectively stop some actions while allowing others to occur. The goal is to develop methodology to reliably measure the time it takes to stop actions, investigate the psychological mechanisms involved in stopping, and develop tools for defence-related personnel and job selection. The project provides significant benefits by enabling the study of how response inhibition ensures that appropriate actions occur and how failures of inhibition result in inappropriate actions. Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE140101181
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$384,183.00
Summary
How Do Our Past Decisions Affect Our Present Decisions? – An Innovative Model. Decisions under time pressure made in the past have a tendency to affect our current decisions. This phenomenon is often termed ‘sequential effects’. Typically, sequential effects are explained by positing the existence of a psychological mechanism that is specifically aimed at resolving conflicting information. The aim of this project is to develop a computational model that produces sequential effects naturally. Inn ....How Do Our Past Decisions Affect Our Present Decisions? – An Innovative Model. Decisions under time pressure made in the past have a tendency to affect our current decisions. This phenomenon is often termed ‘sequential effects’. Typically, sequential effects are explained by positing the existence of a psychological mechanism that is specifically aimed at resolving conflicting information. The aim of this project is to develop a computational model that produces sequential effects naturally. Innovatively, this model would remove the need for an explicit conflict monitoring mechanism. This project is significant because it progresses our understanding of how humans deal with conflict. The expected outcome is a comprehensive, quantitative account of sequential effects in human decision making.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE200101130
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$426,770.00
Summary
Beyond Response Time and Choice: Understanding Changes of Mind in Decisions. The project aims to provide novel experimental insight into how people change their minds during decisions, through identifying the cognitive architecture that reflects the behaviour that we observe from people. The project is significant because it provides a substantially deeper understanding of the cognitive decision process and how it changes over time, as opposed to previous research focusing on only the final resp ....Beyond Response Time and Choice: Understanding Changes of Mind in Decisions. The project aims to provide novel experimental insight into how people change their minds during decisions, through identifying the cognitive architecture that reflects the behaviour that we observe from people. The project is significant because it provides a substantially deeper understanding of the cognitive decision process and how it changes over time, as opposed to previous research focusing on only the final response that people make. The expected outcome is a comprehensive understanding of the human decision process through cognitive models that provide an accurate reflection of this mental process. The benefit is an improved understanding of decisions, which are a fundamental part of everyday human life.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE130100129
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$374,943.00
Summary
A model based approach to investigating short-term memory: exploiting response time distributions. Working memory is one of the most fundamental and well studied aspects of human cognition. The project plans to develop and test a computational modelling framework into which fundamental theories of short-term memory can be placed. This unique approach will offer a deeper understanding of the underlying components of working memory.
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE170100177
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$365,000.00
Summary
Cognitive models of mental architectures in consumer preference. This project aims to characterise the mental architecture of consumer preference, the decision mechanisms and strategies that people use to select products or service options. It uses carefully designed experiments and cognitive modelling of mental architectures that capitalise on the information in the product decisions people make and the time taken to make them. The project provides insight into how people reason with and use in ....Cognitive models of mental architectures in consumer preference. This project aims to characterise the mental architecture of consumer preference, the decision mechanisms and strategies that people use to select products or service options. It uses carefully designed experiments and cognitive modelling of mental architectures that capitalise on the information in the product decisions people make and the time taken to make them. The project provides insight into how people reason with and use information to inform their decisions. This will help organisations to improve products and services and engage with consumers, to create competitive advantage, improve customer service and ultimately stimulate the economy.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE140100772
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$393,414.00
Summary
Response Time Constraints on Category Learning. Theories of associative learning and decision-making are among the most mathematically well developed in psychology. However, theories of learning do not account for the time course of decision-making, and theories of decision-making do not account for how decision-relevant information is learned. This project will develop an integrated theoretical framework linking core principles of associative learning theories with sequential sampling models of ....Response Time Constraints on Category Learning. Theories of associative learning and decision-making are among the most mathematically well developed in psychology. However, theories of learning do not account for the time course of decision-making, and theories of decision-making do not account for how decision-relevant information is learned. This project will develop an integrated theoretical framework linking core principles of associative learning theories with sequential sampling models of the time course of decision-making. The new theory will provide a quantitative account of how incremental associative learning processes drive changes in cognitive representations that, in turn, account for known changes in the time course of decision-making.Read moreRead less