I have some questions about how decision-making effects the stall catchers game. I read an article in the July\August issue of Discover magazine about decision-making.
There are two different systems used in decision-making. System one is referred to as the fast system. The basal ganglia, and cortex play a major role in it. Groups of neurons develop patterns of firing that are strengthened with repeated exposure to stimuli. This is key to making split-second decisions under pressure.
System number two is referred to as being slow. The prefrontal cortex, and the hippocampus are involved in the system. They work together in situations that involve rule-based decision-making.
One of the drawbacks of the fast system is that it leads to more errors than using the slow system. In a stall catcher competition, like the one that’s going to be held next week, would it be more likely that players would make more mistakes because a time limit is involved in the competition situation? In other words, would players be more apt to use the fast decision-making system as opposed to the slow decision-making system during a competition?
Experts make decisions differently from novices. In one study that I read about, fire chiefs were interviewed to see how they make decisions. It was thought that the fire chiefs would provide a limited range of options, and then carefully weigh the pros and cons of each option. However, it was found that the fire chiefs just knew what the correct approach would be without having to weigh the options. They could do this because they had years of experience about how to fight fires, and were able to do template matching in which they were able to match the elements of the current situation to elements of situations that they had experienced in the past.
I also read somewhere that chess masters can do a similar type of template matching when they evaluate a chess position. They have hundreds, or even thousands of chess positions stored in their brains. When they look at a chess position on the board, they can match it up with previous games that they have either experienced, or studied. On the other hand, chess novices, usually have to evaluate every possible option on the board before making a move.
How do stall catcher experts like the ones who provide us with the correct answers approach a particular blood vessel? Do they need to carefully look at each frame of the movie in order to make a decision the way the players do, or can they do a kind of template matching based on previous experience like the experts in these other fields?
How accurate are the judgments of the stall catcher experts? How much more accurate are the stall catcher experts than the players? In the stall catcher game we use the concept of sensitivity. What is sensitivity exactly? Are sensitivity and accuracy essentially the same thing, or are they different concepts altogether?