Planning for uncertainty

Erica C Yu

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00541

Abstract

Planning for uncertainty

Highlights

With every choice there is a forgone choice, or opportunity cost
Knox et al (2012) investigate exploratory and exploitative behavior to understand whether people update beliefs about the state of their environment in a reflexive way or a reflective way. This approach for understanding how to learn in complex environments is similar to the dichotomy of model-based and modelfree in reinforcement learning (Barto et al, 1990; Sutton and Barto, 1998), which has recently re-emerged in psychology and neuroscience to describe the processes of learning (Daw et al, 2006; Dayan and Daw, 2008; Chater, 2009; Glascher et al, 2010)
Model-free decision makers navigate their environments through simple trial-and-error learning about the value of possible actions based only on direct experiences

Summary

Introduction

With every choice there is a forgone choice, or opportunity cost. When I choose to dine at a particular restaurant, am I giving up the opportunity to dine elsewhere, but I am giving up the opportunity to learn the quality of other restaurants. The nature of belief-directed exploratory choice in human decision-making by Knox, W. Knox et al (2012) investigate exploratory and exploitative behavior to understand whether people update beliefs about the state of their environment in a reflexive way (only in response to observed changes) or a reflective way (without direct observation).

Results

Conclusion