Study on Cognitive Decision Support Based on Learning and Improvement of Mental Models

Although researchers have put forward many theories, models, and built up some computer-based tools for decision making, entrepreneurs play an extremely important role in the process of decision making. Entrepreneurs´ mental models are of great significance to their cognition and decision behaviors when they are faced with complex decision problems. Based on a lot of experiments, behavioral scientists have revealed us some cognitive biases in human being´s mental models, such as overconfidence, representative bias, framing dependent effect, herd effect, mental accounting, sunk cost effect, etc. This paper analyses the role of entrepreneurs´ mental models in decision making and the influence of cognitive biases on mental models. As an individual, the entrepreneur has a hierarchical knowledge system which consists of inherent knowledge at the inner layer, tacit or implicit knowledge at the second layer and explicit knowledge at the outer layer. The knowledge at the three layers and their interaction determine an entrepreneurpsilas mental model. We conducted an experiment to study the influence of explicit learning on individualspsila decision behaviors. The experiment result shows that explicit learning can change a decision makerpsilas knowledge system to a certain degree and his/her mental model varies accordingly. However such change might not always be stable. Finally, we propose a framework of cognitive decision support based on decision makerpsilas learning and the improvement of his/her mental models.