Game form recognition in preference elicitation, cognitive abilities, and cognitive load *

This study further examines the failure of game form recognition in preference elicita-tion (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 misconcep-tion, 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. (c) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.