Polina is a Senior Manager at Enterprise Analytics.
March 1, 2005 Publications
The use of microworlds to study dynamic decision making
Dynamic decision-making (DDM) research grew out of a perceived need for understanding how people control dynamic, complex, real-world systems. DDM has describable characteristics and, with some unavoidable sacrifice of realism, is suitable for study in a laboratory setting through the use of complex computer simulations commonly called `microworlds'. This paper presents a taxonomic definition of DDM, an updated review of existing microworlds and their characteristics, and a set of cognitive demands imposed by DDM tasks. Although the study of DDM has garnered little attention to date, we believe that both technological advancement and the relationships between DDM and naturalistic decision making, complex problem solving, and general systems theory have made DDM a viable process by which to study how people make decisions in dynamic, real-world environments...
March 1, 2005 Publications
The relationships between cognitive ability and dynamic decision making
This study investigated the relationships between cognitive ability (as assessed by the Raven Progressive Matrices Test [RPM] and the Visual-Span Test [VSPAN]) and individuals' performance in three dynamic decision making (DDM) tasks (i.e., regular Water Purification Plant [WPP], Team WPP, and Firechief). Participants interacted repeatedly with one of the three microworlds. Our results indicate a positive association between VSPAN and RPM scores and between each of those measures and performance in the three dynamic tasks. Practice had no effect on the correlation between RPM score and performance in any of the microworlds, but it led to an increased correlation between VSPAN score and performance in Team WPP. The pattern of associations between performance in microworlds and assessments of cognitive ability was consistent with the task requirements of the microworlds. These findings …
December 23, 2015 Publications
Decision-making competence and attempted suicide
Objective: The propensity of people vulnerable to suicide to make poor life decisions is increasingly well documented. Do they display an extreme degree of decision biases? The present study used a behavioral-decision approach to examine the susceptibility of low-lethality and high-lethality suicide attempters to common decision biases that may ultimately obscure alternative solutions and deterrents to suicide in a crisis...
June, 2003 Publications
The adaptive character of the attentional system: statistical sensitivity in a target localization task.
A localization task required participants to indicate which of 4 locations contained a briefly displayed target. Most displays also contained a distractor that was not equally probable in these locations, affecting performance dramatically. Responses were faster when a display had no distractor and almost as fast when the distractor was in its frequent location. Conversely, responses were slower when targets appeared in frequent-distractor locations, even though targets were equally likely in each location. Negative-priming effects were reliably smaller when targets followed distractors in the frequent-distractor location compared to the rare-distractor location, challenging the episodic-retrieval account. Experiment 2 added a 5th location that rarely displayed distractors and never targets, yet responses slowed most when distractors appeared there. The results confirmed that the attentional system is sensitive to first-and …
January, 2016 Publications
Paralimbic and lateral prefrontal encoding of reward value during intertemporal choice in attempted suicide
BackgroundAlongside impulsive suicide attempts, clinicians encounter highly premeditated suicidal acts, particularly in older adults. We have previously found that in contrast to the more impulsive suicide attempters’ inability to delay gratification, serious and highly planned suicide attempts were associated with greater willingness to wait for larger rewards. This study examined neural underpinnings of intertemporal preference in suicide attempters. We expected that impulsivity and suicide attempts, particularly poorly planned ones, would predict altered paralimbic subjective value representations. We also examined lateral prefrontal and paralimbic correlates of premeditation in suicidal behavior.MethodA total of 48 participants aged 46–90 years underwent extensive clinical and cognitive characterization and completed the delay discounting task in the scanner: 26 individuals with major depression (13 with and 13 …