A normative-descriptive study of team detection with communication alternatives

A model of human decision-making in distributed detection problems is developed and described. The model, called TOSCA, involves a team of two decision-makers (DMs), a primary DM and a consultant, whose goal is to solve a sequential binary hypothesis-testing problem. The model is based on the work of J.D. Papastavrou and M. Athans (1986), which modeled the primary DM and the consultant as members of a team with a common goal. TOSCA extends their work by including other features involved in distributed detection and team decision-making. TOSCA extends the model of Papastavrou and Athans by not only developing a normative mathematical formulation with these features, but also designing and running an experimental paradigm with human subjects to generate descriptive data. After analyzing how humans deviated from predicted normative behavior, the parameters in the normative model were adjusted to reflect human statistical misperception, resulting in a normative-descriptive model.<>