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Executive information systems represent a significant departure from traditional computer-based information systems. Advocates of executive systems claim that their systems offer the leading-edge option for making computers truly effective for supporting key management functions. This paper examines the interaction between key characteristics of executive systems and fundamental features of human thinking drawn from the field of Behavioral Decision Theory. We examine the possibility that the operation of these systems may reinforce or intensify certain biases in human information processing. We present three examples of potential bias-intensification: availability, regression effects, and overconfidence. Next, the paper applies the concept of decisional guidance to develop design implications for executive systems. Lastly, the paper offers avenues for theoretical development and empirical research.

Consumers often arrive at the point of purchase with a particular product to purchase in mind and must search for this target product in the product display. Drawing on visual crowding theory, we suggest that an individual’s ability to find a target product in a display varies according to the embeddedness of the target, which depends on the locations of the target and non-target products in the display. We refer to the visual impact of non-target products on target products that results in an inability to differentiate and recognize the target product as “target visual crowdedness (TVC).” Across five experimental studies, we manipulate TVC and show that as TVC increases the duration of the visual search increases. Eye-tracking data provide evidence of how TVC affects attention and information processing in target product search tasks. We develop a visual crowdedness metric that quantifies TVC and can be used by researchers and practitioners to estimate the visual search effort needed to find a product in a display.

In incentive-alignment choice experiments, each decision is realized with some prob- ability prob < 1. Incentive alignment induces truth telling, i.e., respondents do not consciously lie, given the information they have processed. However, based on the psychological distance literature and the bounded rationality literature, we predict that prob < 1 is not necessarily enough to induce consumers to process information and choose as they would if choices were realized with certainty (prob = 1). In three eye tracking experiments, we vary the probability prob that choices will be realized, from 0 to 1, and study the impact on attention, information processing, and choice. Consistent with our hypotheses, we find that as prob is increased from 0 to 1, consumers: process the choice-relevant information more carefully and in a way that is more consistent with a compensatory decision process; become less novelty seeking; become more price sensitive. These findings have implications for the ecological validity of incentive-aligned preference measurement surveys. While it is not feasible to systematically use questions with high prob in the eld, we further predict and find that placing a higher-probability question (such as an external validity task) at the beginning rather than the end of a questionnaire has a desirable carryover effect on attention, information processing and choice throughout the questionnaire.

Background: The study of the attentional system remains a challenge for current neuroscience. The “Attention Network Test” (ANT) was designed to study simultaneously three different attentional networks (alerting, orienting, and executive) based in subtraction of different experimental conditions. However, some studies recommend caution with these calculations due to the interactions between the attentional networks. In particular, it is highly relevant that several interpretations about attentional impairment have arisen from these calculations in diverse pathologies. Event related potentials (ERPs) and neural source analysis can be applied to disentangle the relationships between these attentional networks not specifically shown by behavioral measures. Results: This study shows that there is a basic level of alerting (tonic alerting) in the no cue (NC) condition, represented by a slow negative trend in the ERP trace prior to the onset of the target stimuli. A progressive increase in the CNV amplitude related to the amount of information provided by the cue conditions is also shown. Neural source analysis reveals specific modulations of the CNV related to a task-related expectancy presented in the NC condition; a late modulation triggered by the central cue (CC) condition and probably representing a generic motor preparation; and an early and late modulation for spatial cue (SC) condition suggesting specific motor and sensory preactivation. Finally, the first component in the information processing of the target stimuli modulated by the interaction between orienting network and the executive system can be represented by N1. Conclusions: The ANT is useful as a paradigm to study specific attentional mechanisms and their interactions. However, calculation of network effects is based in subtractions with non-comparable experimental conditions, as evidenced by the present data, which can induce misinterpretations in the study of the attentional capacity in human subjects. Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad PSI2010- 16825

Speculators can discover whether a signal is true or false by processing it but this takes time. Hence they face a trade-off between trading fast on a signal (i.e., before processing it), at the risk of trading on a false positive, or trading after processing the signal, at the risk that prices already reflect their information. The number of speculators who choose to trade fast increases with news reliability and decreases with the cost of fast trading technologies. The authors derive testable implications for the effects of these variables on (i) the value of information, (ii) patterns in returns and trades, (iii) the frequency of price reversals in a stock, and (iv) informational efficiency. Cheaper fast trading technologies simultaneously raise informational efficiency and the frequency of "mini-flash crashes": large price movements that revert quickly.