Training diversity promotes absolute-value-guided choice.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Science
• Neuroscience
• Behavioral Economics

Background:

• Human decision-making involves learning either absolute values or relative preferences.
• Environmental factors influencing these learning strategies remain largely unknown.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how environmental diversity influences the formation of absolute values versus relative preferences.
• To test the hypothesis that increased environmental diversity promotes absolute value learning.

Main Methods:

• A multi-day learning experiment with twenty sessions was conducted.
• Participants chose between pairs of images with varying reward probabilities.
• Learning strategies (absolute value vs. relative preference) were assessed by cross-session choices.

Main Results:

• Learning more images concurrently within a session enhanced absolute-value learning.
• Concurrent learning suppressed relative-preference learning.
• Cumulative exposure to more options across sessions did not affect learning strategy.

Conclusions:

• Human preference encoding adapts to the diversity of the immediate learning context.
• The structure of the learning environment, specifically concurrent option diversity, shapes decision-making strategies.