Abstract
Winter is coming: How humans forage in a temporally structured environment
Highlights
In our daily lives, we are constantly faced with the problem of spotting items of interest in a complex visual environment
We explored how foraging is influenced by temporal structure
We tested for effects on the number of targets in the display by conducting an ANOVA on foraging duration with target number as a factor
Summary
We are constantly faced with the problem of spotting items of interest in a complex visual environment. Other approaches within Optimal Foraging Theory build on Marginal Value Theorem by proposing that individuals are building predictions of display/patch quality while foraging (Cain et al, 2012; McNamara, 1982; Olsson & Brown, 2006) These accounts still propose that foraging behavior is driven by very limited information. We found that temporal history influenced foraging behavior in a foraging task for Ts among Ls (Experiment 1)—Participants foraged longer during falling phases Note that these findings are inconsistent with classic optimal foraging theories. People may forage for longer in falling phases than rising phases because the expected yield of search is influenced by the content of the previous displays (which is higher for falling phases), albeit not in the manner predicted by the Marginal Value Theorem. These results highlight the limitations of existing models and demonstrate that foraging theories need to consider richer models of observers’ representations of the world
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