Simulation games can play a critical role in enabling students to navigate the problem spaces of the past while simultaneously critiquing the models designers offer to represent those problem spaces. There is much to be gained through their use. This includes rich opportunities for students to engage the past as independent historians; to consider…

How do people select among different strategies to accomplish a given task? Across disciplines, the strategy selection problem represents a major challenge. We propose a quantitative model that predicts how selection emerges through the interplay among strategies, cognitive capacities, and the environment. This interplay carves out for each…

Professional psychologists are often confronted with the task of making binary decisions about individuals, such as predictions about future behavior or employee selection. Test users familiar with linear models and Bayes's theorem are likely to assume that the accuracy of decisions is consistently improved by combination of outcomes across valid…

Gaming is discussed against a background of rationalist and historicist traditions of reality; trivial and nontrivial machine models of problem solving; and rigid-rule and free-form games. (JKP)

Gigerenzer (2000) and Anderson (1990) analyzed reasoning by asking: what are the reasoner's goals? This emphasizes the adaptiveness of behavior rather than whether a belief is normative. Belief in the ''hot hand'' in basketball suggests that players experiencing streaks should be given more shots, but this has been seen as a fallacy due to…

Free-form games are applicable to a range of problem-solving situations. This document discusses gaming as a procedure for organized study of the complex problems entailed in confrontations and crises. The major focus of the booklet is on the various forms of this game type, the kinds of problems to which it is best adapted, and some approaches to…

Describes a simulation exercise that integrates current events with the basics of decision making under crisis. Reports positive results in terms of student participation, interaction and reflection while creating minimal demands on class time. Provides details for using the simulation. (KO)