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Human foraging strategies flexibly adapt to resource distribution and time constraints
Valeria Simonelli1,2, Davide Nuzzi1, Gian Luca Lancia1
1Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, National Research Council, Rome, Italy.
Cognitive, Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience
|September 22, 2025
Summary
Humans flexibly adapt foraging strategies based on resource availability and time limits. Performance improves with learning, approaching optimal strategies in a simulated foraging task.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Science
- Behavioral Ecology
- Human Decision-Making
Background:
- Foraging is essential for survival, but human strategy flexibility remains poorly understood.
- Understanding adaptive foraging behavior is key to fields like ecology and economics.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how humans adjust foraging strategies under varying resource distributions and time constraints.
- To examine the role of learning and uncertainty in human foraging decisions.
Main Methods:
- A video-game-like foraging task with a four-area environment and timed coin collection.
- Participants navigated, learned, and memorized treasure box locations.
- Analysis of stay-or-leave decisions and navigation times.
Main Results:
- Human foraging strategies (stay-or-leave, navigation time) adapt to resource distribution and time limits.
- Performance improved over time through enhanced learning of resource locations and distributions.
- Adaptive within-trial strategy adjustments based on uncertainty about alternative areas.
Conclusions:
- Human foraging behavior is highly flexible, adapting dynamically to environmental conditions.
- Learning and uncertainty reduction significantly enhance foraging efficiency.
- Ecologically rich scenarios and optimality models are crucial for studying human foraging.
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