When good news leads to bad choices

McDevitt, Margaret A.; Dunn, Roger; Spetch, Marcia L.; Ludvig, Elliot Andrew

doi:10.1002/jeab.192

Cited by 90 publications

(154 citation statements)

References 76 publications

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“…One approach that has been fruitful in this endeavor consists of giving animals a choice between one of two options, each leading to a specific stimulus-reward outcome in which one option is suboptimal relative to the other, and examining the choices made. Using a similar approach (McDevitt et al 2016; Zentall, 2016), researchers have consistently demonstrated pigeons show a large suboptimal preference for an option that offers less primary reinforcement over an option that offers greater primary reinforcement (e.g., Dunn and Spetch, 1990; Spetch et al 1990; Gipson et al 2009; Stagner and Zentall, 2010; Smith et al 2016). Furthermore, the effects demonstrated by the suboptimal choice procedure used in pigeons have also been replicated in human subjects (Molet et al 2012), suggesting comparable mechanisms that affect decision-making.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Suboptimal choice in rats: Incentive salience attribution promotes maladaptive decision-making

Chow

Smith

Wilson

et al. 2017

Behavioural Brain Research

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Stimuli that are more predictive of subsequent reward also function as better conditioned reinforcers. Moreover, stimuli attributed with incentive salience function as more robust conditioned reinforcers. Some theories have suggested that conditioned reinforcement plays an important role in promoting suboptimal choice behavior, like gambling. The present experiments examined how different stimuli, those attributed with incentive salience versus those without, can function in tandem with stimulus-reward predictive utility to promote maladaptive decision-making in rats. One group of rats had lights associated with goal-tracking as the reward-predictive stimuli and another had levers associated with sign-tracking as the reward-predictive stimuli. All rats were first trained on a choice procedure in which the expected value across both alternatives was equivalent but differed in their stimulus-reward predictive utility. Next, the expected value across both alternatives was systematically changed so that the alternative with greater stimulus-reward predictive utility was suboptimal in regard to primary reinforcement. The results demonstrate that in order to obtain suboptimal choice behavior, incentive salience alongside strong stimulus-reward predictive utility may be necessary; thus, maladaptive decision-making can be driven more by the value attributed to stimuli imbued with incentive salience that reliably predict a reward rather than the reward itself.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Suboptimal choice in rats: Incentive salience attribution promotes maladaptive decision-making

Chow

Smith

Wilson

et al. 2017

Behavioural Brain Research

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“…It is the fallibility of the primates (human and nonhuman) that is fascinating in relation to the proficiency and seeming mastery of pigeons in this task. Those species differences remind us of the importance of considering evolutionary histories of species as they are reflected in response strategies (Herbranson, 2012), although it is important to note that in other cases, pigeons demonstrate suboptimal choices similar to those seen in humans (e.g., McDevitt, Dunn, Spetch, & Ludvig, 2016;Zentall, 2015). Thus, there is not a clear picture of what factors best predict susceptibility to decisional biases across species.…”

Section: The Monty Hall Problem and Misrepresenting Probabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

To Err Is (Not Only) Human: Fallibility as a Window Into Primate Cognition

Beran¹

2017

CCBR

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Human cognition affords our species an excellent toolbox for solving problems. Many nonhuman animal species appear to share with humans some of these tools. However, human cognition also is fallible. Susceptibility to perceptual illusions, misrepresentation of probabilities, cognitive biases, faulty memory, and heuristics all present sources of error from which behavior is suboptimal in the pursuit of goals. Some nonhuman species share these perceptual and cognitive biases with humans. Examples of this are described for nonhuman primates, ranging from perceptual illusions to humanlike failures on games of probability such as the Monty Hall Problem. Sometimes the performances of nonhuman primates mirror those of humans, but there are exceptions. Given that other species do experience things erroneously and make errors in judgment, it is an exciting question of whether they also might generate any strategies to offset their fallibility. Two examples to suggest that they do are provided from research with chimpanzees. One is of strategic self-distraction in the face of tempting rewards in a delay of gratification task. The other is of information-seeking behaviors in different contexts where chimpanzees have different types of information. This research, and that of many other groups, shows the value of examining perceptual and cognitive errors across species, and how different individuals and different species may be equipped psychologically to deal with the possibility of these errors occurring. Keywords: primate cognition, perception, illusions, self-control, metacognition IntroductionThe 20th century saw a shift in how humans thought about nonhuman animals (hereafter, animals), their behavior, and the cognitive processes that might underlie their behavior. Comparative cognition emerged as a strong discipline in the second half of the century, largely as a result of the broader cognitive revolution in human psychology, continued developments in ethology, and new opportunities to study a diverse range of species (Shettleworth, 2010). Earlier comparative psychologists certainly took an interest in aspects of cognition (see Dewsbury, 1984Dewsbury, , 2000Dewsbury, , 2013, but researchers in the second half of the century provided new approaches to understanding animal minds. Initially these approaches focused largely on traditional aspects of human cognitive psychology, including memory, perceptual capacities, and learning phenomenon (e.g., Honig & Fetterman, 1992;Hulse, Fowler, & Honig, 1978;Roitblat, Bever, & Terrace, 1984), as they might reflect the use of mental representations and other information-processing approaches for interacting with the world. Later, 58COMPARATIVE COGNITION & BEHAVIOR REVIEWS Beran research increasingly focused on questions that covered nearly every topic found in a human cognitive psychology textbook, and even questions that were not typically discussed in such sources (e.g., theory of mind, deception, mind reading, cooperative decision making, metacognition, mental time travel, and ot...

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“…For instance, ‘curiosity’ can be seen as motivated by the goal of seeking information [13,14], and work on intrinsic motivation [15] has suggested that agents may maximize not only the sum of future rewards, but also the reduction of uncertainty about rewards in the environment [16–18]. Moreover, behavioral results, and corresponding neural recordings in monkeys, have convincingly shown that advance information is valuable in of itself, that is, even if this information cannot be acted upon [19–23]. …”

Section: The Computational Level: the Goals Of A Decision-making Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reinforcement learning with Marr

Niv

Langdon

2016

Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences

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To many, the poster child for David Marr’s famous three levels of scientific inquiry is reinforcement learning—a computational theory of reward optimization, which readily prescribes algorithmic solutions that evidence striking resemblance to signals found in the brain, suggesting a straightforward neural implementation. Here we review questions that remain open at each level of analysis, concluding that the path forward to their resolution calls for inspiration across levels, rather than a focus on mutual constraints.

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When good news leads to bad choices

Cited by 90 publications

References 76 publications

Suboptimal choice in rats: Incentive salience attribution promotes maladaptive decision-making

Suboptimal choice in rats: Incentive salience attribution promotes maladaptive decision-making

To Err Is (Not Only) Human: Fallibility as a Window Into Primate Cognition

Reinforcement learning with Marr

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