Investigation of Input Parameters for Digital Computer

A digital-computer program has been written to operate a psychological experiment. This program is designed to be used by experimenters who are not skilled in computer technology. The program ensures that a properly initialized and fully documented experiment will be conducted. The psychological experiment itself is designed to investigate the ability of human subjects to predict successive numbers in a sequence or correlated random numbers. There is an optimum policy by which the subject may minimize the expected cost of his errors. Quantitative measures of the subjects' behavior with respect to the optimum policy show the effects of individual differences and learning. Periodic oscillations may also be present in the subjects' policy behavior. Unless instructed otherwise, the majority of subjects quickly infer "personal causation." They believe that their predictions have an effect on the numbers that they are predicting. Such a hypothesis is false, however. These subjects are actually being superstitious about their unstructured environment. Many possibilities exist for further work in the design, implementation, and conduct of this experiment. E. C. Van Horn, Jr.