Rational use of cognitive resources in human planning
Abstract
Making good decisions requires thinking ahead, but the huge number of actions and outcomes one could consider makes exhaustive planning infeasible for computationally constrained agents, such as humans. How people are nevertheless able to solve novel problems when their actions have long-reaching consequences is thus a long-standing question in cognitive science. To address this question, we propose a model of resource-constrained planning that allows us to derive optimal planning strategies. We find that previously proposed heuristics such as best-first search are near optimal under some circumstances but not others. In a mouse-tracking paradigm, we show that people adapt their planning strategies accordingly, planning in a manner that is broadly consistent with the optimal model but not with any single heuristic model. We also find systematic deviations from the optimal model that might result from additional cognitive constraints that are yet to be uncovered.
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“humans appear to adaptively allocate computation (Russek et al., 2022; Lieder and Griffiths, 2020; Callaway et al., 2022; Gershman et al., 2015)”
From Cognitive Architectures for Language Agents (2023) · cites this paper as Callaway et al., 2022
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Recurring suboptimal choices result in superior decision makingPreprint
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Recurring Suboptimal Choices Result in Superior Decision MakingPreprint
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- Authors
- Callaway, F., van Opheusden, B., Gul, S., Das, P., Krueger, P. M., Griffiths, T. L., & Lieder, F.
- Affiliations
- Princeton University (US)
- University of California, Berkeley (US)
- University of California, Irvine (US)
- Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (DE)
- Corresponding author
- Callaway, Frederick
- ORCID
- Venue
- Nature Human Behaviour
- Published
- 2022-04-28
- Volume
- 6
- Issue
- 8
- Pages
- 1112-1125
- ISSN
- 2397-3374 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W4225148555
- Cited by
- 121
- References
- 70
- Citations by year
- 2026: 19 · 2025: 26 · 2024: 26 · 2023: 26 · 2022: 18 · 2021: 5
- FWCI
- 16.18
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Update notices
- correction (2022-06-16)
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Nature Human Behaviour (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion)
- OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Templeton World Charity Foundation
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › General Decision Sciences › Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › AI-based Problem Solving and Planning
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Keywords
- resource-constrained planning, human decision-making, planning strategies, best-first search, heuristics, mouse tracking, cognitive resources, computational resource constraints, problem solving
- MeSH terms
- Heuristics, Cognition, Humans
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