Quantum-like decision theory is by now a well-developed field. We here test the predictions of an application of this approach to persuasion as developed by Danilov and Lambert-Mogiliansky in [6]. One remarkable result entails that in contrast to Bayesian predictions, distraction rather than relevant information has a powerful potential to influence decision-making. We conducted an experiment in the context of donations to NGOs active in the protection of endangered species. We first tested the quantum incompatibility of two perspectives ‘trust’ and ‘urgency’ in a separate experiment. We next recruited 1371 respondents and divided them into three groups: a control group, a first treatment group and the main treatment group. Our main result is that ‘distracting’ information significantly affected decision-making: it induced a switch in respondents’ choice as to which project to support compared with the control group. The first treatment group which was provided with compatible information exhibited no difference compared with the control group. Population variables play no role suggesting that quantum-like indeterminacy may indeed be a basic regularity of the mind. We thus find support for the thesis that the manipulability of people’s decision-making is linked to the quantum indeterminacy of their subjective representations (mental pictures) of the choice alternatives.
In source memory studies, a decision-maker is concerned with identifying the context in which a given episodic experience occurred. A common paradigm for studying source memory is the ‘three-list’ experimental paradigm, where a subject studies three lists of words and is later asked whether a given word appeared on one or more of the studied lists. Surprisingly, the sum total of the acceptance probabilities generated by asking for the source of a word separately for each list (‘list 1?’, ‘list 2?’, ‘list 3?’) exceeds the acceptance probability generated by asking whether that word occurred on the union of the lists (‘list 1 or 2 or 3?’). The episodic memory for a given word therefore appears over distributed on the disjoint contexts of the lists. A quantum episodic memory model [QEM] was proposed by Brainerd, Wang and Reyna [8] to explain this type of result. In this paper, we apply a Hamiltonian dynamical extension of QEM for over distribution of source memory. The Hamiltonian operators are simultaneously driven by parameters for re-allocation of gist-based and verbatim-based acceptance support as subjects are exposed to the cue word in the first temporal stage, and are attenuated for description-dependence by the querying probe in the second temporal stage. Overall, the model predicts well the choice proportions in both separate list and union list queries and the over distribution effect, suggesting that a Hamiltonian dynamics for QEM can provide a good account of the acceptance processes involved in episodic memory tasks.
Why is quantum theory so universal? Why does it apply to so many situations beyond the field of microphysics? To answer such questions, we can find inspiration from a remarkable reflection of the French philosopher of Science Jean Cavaillès about probabilities: “If any physical law is nothing else than a gamble for action, the scandal of probabilities ceases: far from being an inadequate substitute for our power to know, probabilities must be seen as the paradigm and the foundation of all scientific activity” [6].
Traditionally, the way one evaluates the performance of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) system is via a comparison to human performance in specific tasks, treating humans as a reference for high-level cognition. However, these comparisons leave out important features of human intelligence: the capability to transfer knowledge and take complex decisions based on emotional and rational reasoning. These decisions are influenced by current inferences as well as prior experiences, making the decision process strongly subjective and “apparently” biased. In this context, a definition of compositional intelligence is necessary to incorporate these features in future AI tests. Here, a concrete implementation of this will be suggested, using recent developments in quantum cognition, natural language and compositional meaning of sentences, thanks to categorical compositional models of meaning.
The behavior of agents represented by Braitenberg vehicles is investigated in the context of the quantum robot paradigm. The agents are processed through quantum circuits with fuzzy inputs, this permits to enlarge the behavioral possibilities and the associated decisions for these simple vehicles. The logical formulation Eigenlogic, using quantum logical observables as propositions and eigenvalues as truth values is applied in this investigation. Fuzzy logic arises naturally in this formulation when considering input states that are not eigenvectors of the logical observables, the fuzzy membership being the quantum mean value of the logical observable on the input state. Computer simulations permits visualization of complex behaviors resulting from the multiple combination of quantum control gates. This allows the detection of new Braitenberg vehicle behavior patterns related to identified emotions and linked to quantum-like effects.
This article documents an empirical pilot study conducted to determine whether decisions of image trustworthiness are contextual. Contextuality is an active area of investigation in quantum cognition, however there has been little compelling evidence of its presence in human information processing. A Bell scenario experimental design was employed which manipulated both content and representational features in order to minimize the difference in marginal probabilities across experimental conditions. In addition, participants were subjected to time pressure in order to promote more spontaneous decisions. Results revealed no significant differences in marginal probabilities, however, no evidence of contextuality was found. The study revealed a tension between the requirement for minimizing the difference in marginal probabilities and the need to produce the strong correlations required to empirically ascertain contextuality.
This article presents a framework for analysing contextuality in human information processing. In the quantum cognition community there has been ongoing speculation that quantum-like contextuality may be present in human cognition. The framework aims to provide a convenient means of designing experiments and performing contextuality analysis in order to ascertain whether this speculation holds. Experimental designs are expressed as probabilistic programs. The semantics of a program are composed from hypergraphs called contextuality scenarios, which, in turn, are used to determine whether the cognitive phenomenon being studied is contextual. Examples are provided illustrate the framework as well as some reflection about its broader application to quantum physics.
In this work, we use the recently introduced double-dilation construction by Zwart and Coecke to construct a new categorical probabilistic theory of density hypercubes. By considering multi-slit experiments, we show that the theory displays higher-order interference of order up to fourth. We also show that the theory possesses hyperdecoherence maps, which can be used to recover quantum theory in the Karoubi envelope.
Relevance judgment in Information Retrieval is influenced by multiple factors. These include not only the topicality of the documents but also other user oriented factors like trust, user interest, etc. Recent works have identified and classified these various factors into seven dimensions of relevance. In a previous work, these relevance dimensions were quantified and user's cognitive state with respect to a document was represented as a state vector in a Hilbert Space, with each relevance dimension representing a basis. It was observed that relevance dimensions are incompatible in some documents, when making a judgment. Incompatibility being a fundamental feature of Quantum Theory, this motivated us to test the Quantum nature of relevance judgments using Bell type inequalities. However, none of the Bell-type inequalities tested have shown any violation. We discuss our methodology to construct incompatible basis for documents from real world query log data, the experiments to test Bell inequalities on this dataset and possible reasons for the lack of violation.
It is the focus of this work to extend and study the previously proposed quantum-like Bayesian networks to deal with decision-making scenarios by incorporating the notion of maximum expected utility in influence diagrams. The general idea is to take advantage of the quantum interference terms produced in the quantum-like Bayesian Network to influence the probabilities used to compute the expected utility of some action. This way, we are not proposing a new type of expected utility hypothesis. On the contrary, we are keeping it under its classical definition. We are only incorporating it as an extension of a probabilistic graphical model in a compact graphical representation called an influence diagram in which the utility function depends on the probabilistic influences of the quantum-like Bayesian network. Our findings suggest that the proposed quantum-like influence digram can indeed take advantage of the quantum interference effects of quantum-like Bayesian Networks to maximise the utility of a cooperative behaviour in detriment of a fully rational defect behaviour under the prisoner's dilemma game.
Clues from psychology indicate that human cognition is not only based on classical probability theory as explained by Kolmogorov’s axioms but additionally on quantum probability. We explore the relation between the law of total probability and its violation resulting in the law of total quantum probability. The violation results from an additional interference that influences the classical probabilities. Outgoing from this exploration we introduce a balanced Bayesian quantum-like model that is based on probability waves. The law of maximum uncertainty indicates how to choose a possible phase value of the wave resulting in a meaningful probability value.
Quantum-like decision theory is by now a well-developed field. We here test the predictions of an application of this approach to persuasion as developed by Danilov and Lambert-Mogiliansky in [6]. One remarkable result entails that in contrast to Bayesian predictions, distraction rather than relevant information has a powerful potential to influence decision-making. We conducted an experiment in the context of donations to NGOs active in the protection of endangered species. We first tested the quantum incompatibility of two perspectives ‘trust’ and ‘urgency’ in a separate experiment. We next recruited 1371 respondents and divided them into three groups: a control group, a first treatment group and the main treatment group. Our main result is that ‘distracting’ information significantly affected decision-making: it induced a switch in respondents’ choice as to which project to support compared with the control group. The first treatment group which was provided with compatible information exhibited no difference compared with the control group. Population variables play no role suggesting that quantum-like indeterminacy may indeed be a basic regularity of the mind. We thus find support for the thesis that the manipulability of people’s decision-making is linked to the quantum indeterminacy of their subjective representations (mental pictures) of the choice alternatives.
Correlation has been widely used to facilitate various information retrieval methods such as query expansion, relevance feedback, document clustering, and multi-modal fusion. Especially, correlation and independence are important issues when fusing different modalities that influence a multi-modal information retrieval process. The basic idea of correlation is that an observable can help predict or enhance another observable. In quantum mechanics, quantum correlation, called entanglement, is a sort of correlation between the observables measured in atomic-size particles when these particles are not necessarily collected in ensembles. In this paper, we examine a multimodal fusion scenario that might be similar to that encountered in physics by firstly measuring two observables (i.e., text-based relevance and image-based relevance) of a multi-modal document without counting on an ensemble of multi-modal documents already labeled in terms of these two variables. Then, we investigate the existence of non-classical correlations between pairs of multi-modal documents. Despite there are some basic differences between entanglement and classical correlation encountered in the macroscopic world, we investigate the existence of this kind of non-classical correlation through the Bell inequality violation. Here, we experimentally test several novel association methods in a small-scale experiment. However, in the current experiment we did not find any violation of the Bell inequality. Finally, we present a series of interesting discussions, which may provide theoretical and empirical insights and inspirations for future development of this direction.
The Contextuality-by-Default (CbD) theory allows one to separate contextuality from context-dependent errors and violations of selective influences (aka "no-signaling" or "no-disturbance" principles). This makes the theory especially applicable to behavioral systems, where violations of selective influences are ubiquitous. For cyclic systems with binary random variables, CbD provides necessary and sufficient conditions for noncontextuality, and these conditions are known to be breached in certain quantum systems. We apply the theory of cyclic systems to a psychophysical double-detection experiment, in which observers were asked to determine presence or absence of a signal property in each of two simultaneously presented stimuli. The results, as in all other behavioral and social systems previous analyzed, indicate lack of contextuality. The role of context in double-detection is confined to lack of selectiveness: the distribution of responses to one of the stimuli is influenced by the state of the other stimulus.
How well does a given pitch fit into a tonal scale or key, being either a major or minor key? This question addresses the well-known phenomenon of tonal attraction in music psychology. Metaphorically, tonal attraction is often described in terms of attracting and repelling forces that are exerted upon a probe tone of a scale. In modern physics, forces are related to gauge fields expressing fundamental symmetries of a theory. In this study we address the intriguing relationship between musical symmetries and gauge forces in the framework of quantum cognition.
In this paper we examine two well-controlled experiments where order effects were shown under stress. We show that for only one of those experiments the QQ equality of Wang and Busemeyer [21] seems to be fairly satisfied (under independence assumptions). Since the experiment satisfying QQ measures physiological variables, this may suggest that quantum order effect outside human judgment models.
We accommodate the Integrated Connectionist/Symbolic Architecture (ICS) of [32] within the categorical compositional semantics (CatCo) of [13], forming a model of categorical compositional cognition (CatCog). This resolves intrinsic problems with ICS such as the fact that representations inhabit an unbounded space and that sentences with differing tree structures cannot be directly compared. We do so in a way that makes the most of the grammatical structure available, in contrast to strategies like circular convolution. Using the CatCo model also allows us to make use of tools developed for CatCo such as the representation of ambiguity and logical reasoning via density matrices, structural meanings for words such as relative pronouns, and addressing over- and under-extension, all of which are present in cognitive processes. Moreover the CatCog framework is sufficiently flexible to allow for entirely different representations of meaning, such as conceptual spaces. Interestingly, since the CatCo model was largely inspired by categorical quantum mechanics, so is CatCog.
We discuss generalized probabilistic models for which states not necessarily obey Kolmogorov’s axioms of probability. We study the relationship between properties and probabilistic measures in this setting, and explore some possible interpretations of these measures.
We use algorithmic information to define co-measurability of observables and investigate its relation to the phenomenon of quantum contextuality.
We take a first step towards establishing a link between the topos approach to quantum theory and the monoidal approach to quantum theory. The topos approach to quantum theory makes extensive use of categories of commutative $$C^*$$ -algebras and their corresponding Gelfand spectrum. We generalise these categories of $$C^*$$ -algebras and generalise the notion of Gelfand spectrum via defining the abstract spectral presheaf. We then characterise this spectral presheaf for the category of sets and relations, and examine how this relates to the notion of observable in this category as studied in the monoidal approach to quantum theory.
