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Bidirectional Influences of Information Sampling and Concept Learning

Braunlich, K; Love, BC; (2021) Bidirectional Influences of Information Sampling and Concept Learning. Psychological Review 10.1037/rev0000287. (In press). Green open access

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Abstract

Contemporary models of categorization typically tend to sidestep the problem of how information is initially encoded during decision making. Instead, a focus of this work has been to investigate how, through selective attention, stimulus representations are “contorted” such that behaviorally relevant dimensions are accentuated (or “stretched”), and the representations of irrelevant dimensions are ignored (or “compressed”). In high-dimensional real-world environments, it is computationally infeasible to sample all available information, and human decision makers selectively sample information from sources expected to provide relevant information. To address these and other shortcomings, we develop an active sampling model, Sampling Emergent Attention (SEA), which sequentially and strategically samples information sources until the expected cost of information exceeds the expected benefit. The model specifies the interplay of two components, one involved in determining the expected utility of different information sources and the other in representing knowledge and beliefs about the environment. These two components interact such that knowledge of the world guides information sampling, and what is sampled updates knowledge. Like human decision makers, the model displays strategic sampling behavior, such as terminating information search when sufficient information has been sampled and adaptively adjusting the search path in response to previously sampled information. The model also shows human-like failure modes. For example, when information exploitation is prioritized over exploration, the bidirectional influences between information sampling and learning can lead to the development of beliefs that systematically differ from reality.

Type: Article
Title: Bidirectional Influences of Information Sampling and Concept Learning
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1037/rev0000287
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/rev0000287
Language: English
Additional information: This article has been published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Copyright for this article is retained by the author(s). Author(s) grant(s) the American Psychological Association the exclusive right to publish the article and identify itself as the original publisher.
Keywords: Decision making, categorization, attention, active sampling
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > Experimental Psychology
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10141287
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