Journal
PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE
Volume 24, Issue 5, Pages 751-761Publisher
SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC
DOI: 10.1177/0956797612463080
Keywords
cognitive neuroscience; decision making
Categories
Funding
- NIMH NIH HHS [R01 MH077708, MH077708] Funding Source: Medline
- NINDS NIH HHS [R01 NS078784, R01 NS 078784] Funding Source: Medline
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A number of accounts of human and animal behavior posit the operation of parallel and competing valuation systems in the control of choice behavior. In these accounts, a flexible but computationally expensive model-based reinforcement-learning system has been contrasted with a less flexible but more efficient model-free reinforcement-learning system. The factors governing which system controls behavior-and under what circumstances-are still unclear. Following the hypothesis that model-based reinforcement learning requires cognitive resources, we demonstrated that having human decision makers perform a demanding secondary task engenders increased reliance on a model-free reinforcement-learning strategy. Further, we showed that, across trials, people negotiate the trade-off between the two systems dynamically as a function of concurrent executive-function demands, and people's choice latencies reflect the computational expenses of the strategy they employ. These results demonstrate that competition between multiple learning systems can be controlled on a trial-by-trial basis by modulating the availability of cognitive resources.
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