Feedback based on simple strategies facilitates strategy execution and selection in foraging

Previous research has shown that human participants performed suboptimally in patch-leaving behavior during foraging tasks. This suboptimal performance stemmed from two primary sources: Participants often adopted a strategy unsuited to the environment and failed to apply it optimally. The current study investigates whether providing feedback on participants' patch-leaving behavior can improve their performance by facilitating either a switch to a more effective strategy or an enhanced application of their existing strategy. All participants completed a patch-leaving task across three sessions: pre-feedback, feedback, and post-feedback. Their patch-leaving strategies in each session were identified through computational modeling. During the feedback session, participants received feedback based on either the fixed-time (FT) or giving-up-time (GUT) strategy. Most participants employed the GUT strategy in the pre-feedback session and showed improved performance in the post-feedback session. In the FT feedback condition, many participants switched to using the FT strategy in the post-feedback session. Participants who switched improved in performance, whereas those who continued using the GUT strategy did not. In contrast, in the GUT feedback condition, most participants continued using the GUT strategy but benefited from feedback due to a more precise execution of the GUT strategy in the post-feedback session. These results suggest that participants can adapt to a better-suited strategy or improve their application of a suboptimal strategy with appropriate feedback.