Cognitive Science Research at Indiana university-Online Game

The Percepts and Concepts Laboratory at Indiana University would like to
to
invite you to participate in our interactive, on-line group experiments.
The
games are entertaining and should be intriguing to those interested in
the
sciences, gaming,etc. Some of the games that we are
currently working on include:

Forager: In this experiment, we are interested in how groups of people
allocate themselves to resources. Your goal in a four-minute experiment
is to
pick up as many resources as you can by moving your icon with the arrow
keys.

Spread of Innovations: This experiment explores how innovative ideas
spread in
a group. As you try to solve a puzzle, you see the solutions proposed by
your
neighbors, and they see your solutions.

Opinion Sharing: You rate things (e.g. faces, music, or paintings) and can
see
the ratings given by others. Over several rounds of ratings, does your
group
converge in its opinion or not?

In all of these experiment, you play with other humans when they are
available
or with artificial intelligence bots when no other humans are currently on-
line. By playing our games, our GEE group benefits because we collect
data on
how collective behavior in human groups emerges, and you benefit by 1)
learning about current research questions and methods in the social
sciences,
2) sharing an engrossing, communal experience with others people (or
bots!),
3) playing games that have deeper significance and more interesting
dynamics
than solitaire, tetris, or the typical fodder of on-line games. The
experiments will run on any computer that has Java 1.4 or later, and can
be
found at:

http://groups.psych.indiana.edu/

If you like the experiments, please tell your friends or favorite news
group,
blog, or forum. The more people who are in our virtual world at any time,
the
more fun it is (and the more data we collect). Also, please reply to this
email is you would like to be placed on our mailing list, or if you're willing
to place a link to our site on your web page. If you find any bugs or have
suggestions for improvements, please email Andy Jones
<andjones@indiana.edu>
or Allen Lee <alllee@cs.indiana.edu>, and CC Rob Goldstone
(rgoldsto@indiana.edu).



Thank you for being part of the global brain,

The Group Experiment Environments (GEE) team

Robert Goldstone - Director

Rowan Johnston - PR/Marketing/Research

Andy Jones - Programmer/Researcher

Allen Lee - Programmer/Researcher

Zoran Rilak - Programmer/Researcher

Michael Roberts - Artificial Inteligence and Computational Modeler