Open AccessGame theory in the healthcare literature: A contextual co‐descriptor analysis of MeSH term assignments
Author(s) -
McCain Katherine W.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
proceedings of the american society for information science and technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1550-8390
pISSN - 0044-7870
DOI - 10.1002/meet.14505001097
Subject(s) - game theory , computer science , variety (cybernetics) , vocabulary , combinatorial game theory , sequential game , positive political theory , mathematical economics , artificial intelligence , mathematics , linguistics , philosophy
Game theory, the study of strategies and decision making, is represented in the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) vocabulary by two terms—GAME THEORY and its immediately narrower term, GAMES, EXPERIMENTAL. Both are terms in MATHEMATICS—a branch of the NATURAL SCIENCES (MeSH Tree H01). Contextual co‐descriptor analysis was used to explore and visualize the game theory topics relevant to medical researchers and scholars, based on the frequently‐assigned MeSH terms assigned to articles also indexed with one or another of these two MeSH terms. The literature indexed with GAME THEORY deals primarily with two key concepts in the field—Evolutionary Game Theory and Human Behavior. GAMES, EXPERIMENTAL retrieves several very different topics—general game‐theoretic behavioral research, human cognition and neuroimaging, and nursing education. It appears that the assignment of GAMES, EXPERIMENTAL conflates the notions of (1) experiments in Game Theory (testing decision‐making scenarios), (2) modeling human brain processes during decision making, and (3) the use of a variety of different kinds of games and simulations to teach in nursing programs. The last might be considered a poor fit to the notion of the role of games in Game Theory as it is generally understood by game theorists.