Adolescents, cognitive ability, and minimax play

Abstract

The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-pro t purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. Abstract: We conduct experiments with adolescent participants on repeated fixed play in three different zero-sum games which have mixed strategy minimax solutions. Further, we collect subject information on cognitive abilities and participation rates in competitive activities. We find the adolescents' correspondences with and deviations from minimax play largely consistent with previously and widely studied adult populations. Further, we find strategic sophistication in terms of implementation of the mixed minimax strategy as well as earnings are not correlated with cognitive ability nor experience in competitive situations.

Cognitive Load and Mixed Strategies: On Brains and Minimax

“…These results are reminiscent of the …ndings reported in Geng et al (2015). These authors do not …nd a relationship between measures of cognitive ability and either the mixture proportions or the serial correlation of actions.…”

“…To our knowledge, Geng, Peng, Shachat, and Zhong (2015) is the only other study that investigates the role of cognitive ability on mixing behavior. 4 The authors do not …nd evidence that higher measures of cognitive ability 5 are related to the behavior consistent with the equilibrium predictions: proportions of the mixture or serial correlation.…”

Cognitive Skills, Strategic Sophistication, and Life Outcomes

“…Sher et al (2014) do not measure cognitive ability (in our sense of abstract or logical reasoning ability), but they do measure working memory, finding that better working memory predicts choices closer to equilibrium in the stickers game but not in the sender-receiver game. Geng et al (2015) study the behavior of adolescents rather than children, and find that their subjects do not play minimax in zero-sum games; since opponents do not play minimax, it is perhaps not surprising that they also find no correlation between cognitive ability and closeness to minimax play for adolescents (nor do they find a correlation with earnings). Finally, using a sample of children and adolescents (ages ten to seventeen), Czermak et al (2016) study the consistency of choices and beliefs in the normal-form games from Costa-Gomes et al (2001).…”

“…Second, we are not aware of any existing papers that investigate how psychometric measures of theory-of-mind and cognitive ability predict the strategic behavior of children in competitive games, although a handful of papers study related questions (Steinbeis et al, 2012;Sher et al, 2014;Geng et al, 2015;Czermak et al, 2016). 5 By contrast, economists and psychologists have begun to investigate how age influences strategic behavior in competitive games (Perner, 1979;Sher et al, 2014;Brosig-Koch et al, 2015;Czermak et al, 2016;Brocas and Carrillo, 2019;Brocas and Carrillo, forthcoming).…”

Serial correlation in National Football League play calling and its effects on outcomes

“…2 Since O'Neill (1987) and the reexamination of the original data by Brown and Rosenthal (1990) there has been mixed evidence regarding mixed strategies in the laboratory. This literature includes Batzilis et al (2014), Binmore, Swierzbinski, and Proulx (2001), Du¤y, Owens, and Smith (2015), Geng et al (2015), Levitt, List, and Reiley (2010), Sopher (1994, 1997), O'Neill (1991), Ochs (1995), Palacios-Huerta and Volij (2008), Amaldoss (2000, 2004), Rapoport and Boebel (1992), Rosenthal, Shachat, and Walker (2003), Shachat (2002), Van Essen and Wooders (2015).…”