ABS 2023
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How to tell if an organism’s prediction strategies are optimal given their limited cognitive resources
Vanessa Ferdinand1, Sarah Marzen2. 1University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia; 2Pitzer, Scripps, and Claremont McKenna College, Los Angeles, CA, United States

Organisms can solve complex tasks despite having limited cognitive resources if those resources are used optimally; a concept known as bounded-rationality or resource-rationality in the cognitive sciences [1]. In this talk, we present a new computational method for evaluating whether an organism’s behavior during a prediction task is resource-rational. We demonstrate this method on the results of a sequence learning experiment with human learners and show that participants used a variety of resource-rational prediction strategies as they attempted (but failed) to perfectly predict difficult sequences. Although this experiment was conducted with human participants, we designed it using a clicker-training paradigm that could hopefully be extended to some non-human animals to understand the prevalence and forms of resource-rational prediction across diverse cognition. We’re interested in receiving feedback on what problems in animal behavior could be advanced with new methods for quantifying the resource-rationality of prediction strategies and welcome collaborations.

[1] F Lieder and TL Griffiths (2020). Resource-rational analysis. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol 43.