In neoclassical economic theory, rational actors are very simple entities: they know everything, they value more better than less, and given a decision situation with certain physical constraints they are able to calculate the optimal outcome and to behave accordingly (cf. Kiser/Ostrom). Any form of social interaction enters the decision situation as an additional constraint. Relaxing the condi...

Starting from Amartya Sen’s works on rational behaviour, in this essay a contextually-embedded choice theory is presented. Using concepts and tools from poset mathematics, we show how to inject in rational choice theory cultural and social e¤ects. Speci…cally, we de…ne some choice super-structures seen as choice sets’ transformations imposed by accepted external consistency of choice requiremen...

Should we give equal weight to all responses in a choice experiment? Previous Choice Modelling papers have considered the issue of the internal consistency of choices – such as the extent to which strictly-dominated options are chosen. In this paper, a different focus is employed, namely the extent to which people choose options which violate their stated upper or lower limits for the acceptabl...

– The generalization of the problem of adaptive competition, known as the minority game, to the case of K possible choices for each player is addressed, and mapped onto a system of interacting perceptrons with input and output units of the type of K-states Potts-spins. An optimal solution of the minority game as well as the dynamical evolution of the adaptive strategies of the players are solve...

Su m m ar y summAry Adolescence is a period of physical, psychological and social transitions from childhood to adulthood. It is associated with a unique set of behaviours, resulting in the common view that adolescents are myopic risk-takers, who are unable to plan ahead or envision the long-term consequences of their decisions and actions. It is also a period of continued development of the co...

These words of Browning suggest that to achieve anything worthwhile, a person should attempt even those things that may turn out to be impossible. Canadian geriatricians have tried to abide by this dictate, but it has not always worked out as well as hoped. We have spread ourselves thinly in our efforts to both improve the lives of older persons and fulfill our academic responsibilities. As a r...

CHENG-WEI CHOU, PING-CHIANG CHOU, JEAN-JOSEPH CHRISTOPHE, ADRIEN COUËTOUX, PIERRE DE FREMINVILLE, NICOLAS GALICHET, CHANG-SHING LEE, JIALIN LIU, DAVID L. SAINT-PIERRE, MICHÈLE SEBAG, OLIVIER TEYTAUD, MEI-HUI WANG, LI-WEN WU AND SHI-JIM YEN Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering National Dong Hwa University Hualien, 974 Taiwan Department of Computer Science and Information En...

ly, one possiblc3 mode of interaction bctwccn the the problLm solver and the dntn base is as follows. A list is maintained of c~cry ;\ssumptioll set disco\rcrcd to bc contradictory. Whcncvcr the problem solver discovers Iwo val~~cs with contt.adictr~ry assumptions, the combined assumption set is placed on this list, and cvcry vaIlIC b,iscd on it or any of its super sets is crascd from the daL\ ...

Many of the decisions that people must make involve selections from arrays of identical options. The six studies presented explored people's preferences in two contexts: choosing one item from rows of identical items and choosing a route from a series of identical routes. The first three studies examined preferences for items in particular positions. Whether people were choosing a product from ...