The Impact Of Working Memory And Risk Orientation On Empirical Decision Making

With the continuous change of new human-machine interface design of aircraft cockpit,the degree of automation gets constantly improved,mechanical failures are gradually reduced,human factor accidents accounted more and more for the proportion of aviation accidents.Decision error is a serious threat to aviation safety.Risk and uncertainty are the significant characteristics of aviation decision making,which is the core of empirical decision making.In this study,the empirical decision-making in the aviation field as a starting point to explore the impact of empirical decision-making factors,and put forward reasonable suggestions for China's civil aviation flight decision-making research.This research intends to find out how the working memory and the types of risk-taking affect the performance of decisions from experience.As an important social adaptation ability,the decisions from experience refers to the ability to make a choice when individuals face the value and emotional conflicts.Although many previous researches have studied on factors accounts for decisions from experience,it's in great dispute that whether working memory has participated in the process of decisions from experience.Moreover,it is not clear that whether the types of risk-taking,a factor of individual differences and personality to affect decision-making,has interaction effect with working memory.Based on these,this research took the independent variable 2(Types of risk-taking:risk preference/risk aversion)x2(Working memory load:load/non-load)mixed experimental design,testing 180 university students with the Balloon Analogue Risk-taking Task(Lejuez,2002),aiming to differentiate between the two types of risk-taking.According to the result,88 students(male:24 female:64 Age:20.36±1.71)were chosen to take the second experiment Iowa Gambling Task(IGT),which is the classic assessment of decisions from experience in a laboratory environment.Specifically speaking,all the participants were separated into two groups randomly according their numbers,then the odd number group took the IGT with working memory load(they should remember and recognize a string of numbers)while the even number group took the IGT without working memory load.The results showed that high working memory load significantly declined the performance in IGT;working memory and the types of risk-taking had interaction effect.That is to say,for the participants of risk preference type,the interference of working memory was not obvious;while for the risk aversion type,when the working memory is occupied,the grades are worse.These results suggested that both working memory and the types of risk-taking affect individuals' decisions from experience.