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Published on: May 2, 2019
Belief certainty guides exploration choices during visual information foraging
Sylvie M Loneragan1, Dragan Rangelov1, Jason B Mattingley1
1Queensland Brain Institute, University of Queensland.
Summary
Decision-makers use belief certainty to guide information foraging. Increased certainty helps decide when to stop exploring and when to switch to new information sources.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Decision Science
- Information Foraging Theory
Background:
- Navigating uncertainty is common in daily choices.
- Information foraging helps decision-makers by gathering data from various sources.
- The process of belief formation and source exploration in foraging remains unclear.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how foragers form beliefs and decide when to explore new information sources.
- To model belief updating and uncertainty during information foraging.
- To understand the role of belief certainty in terminating foraging and exploring new sources.
Main Methods:
- Participants (N=80) explored visual patches with coherent motion signals.
- Beliefs about signal rates were modeled using Bayesian belief updating.
- Signal rate and belief uncertainty were estimated from probability distribution parameters.
Main Results:
- Belief certainty continued to increase even after relative rate estimates plateaued.
- Certainty levels informed the decision to terminate foraging.
- A common certainty threshold triggered exploration decisions during exploitation.
Conclusions:
- Accumulation of belief certainty is a key factor in decision-making during visual information foraging.
- Certainty plays a dual role in both terminating foraging and initiating exploration.
- This study provides insights into the cognitive mechanisms underlying information foraging under uncertainty.
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