Score contribution per author:
α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count
This study further examines the failure of game form recognition in preference elicitation (Cason and Plott, 2014) by making elicitation more cognitively demanding through a cognitive load manipulation. We hypothesized that if subjects misperceive one game for another game, then by depleting their cognitive resources, subjects would misconceive the more-cognitively demanding task for the less-cognitively demanding task at a higher rate. We find no evidence that subjects suffer from a first-price-auction game-form misconception, but once cognitive resources are depleted, subjects’ choices are better explained by random choice. More cognitively able subjects are more immune to deviations from sub-optimal play than lower cognitively able subjects. Moreover, we find no support for partial game form recognition. Our results are robust to the integration of risk preferences in the analysis.