Expert Judgment in a Heterogeneous Task Environment

Abstract

Recent times have seen an explosion of research on the intersection between rules, models, heuristics, and ecological task structure. Many groups have worked to connect loose strategies and findings into a more cohesive theory of judgment, specifying the particular ecologies under which various strategies work well or not. However, the majority of this research has been conducted under the assumption that judgment environments are homogeneous in composition. This paper reports an experiment in which the judgment task of interest possesses a heterogeneous structure, with different subsets of the task environment governed by different rules or weighting functions. Results reveal that experts were able to perform the task well by taking advantage of the heterogeneous nature of the task ecology, selectively choosing and adapting their use of strategies according to how well each operates in the different sub-ecologies of the task environment. Implications for understanding and supporting expert judgment in operational contexts are discussed.