Biology subjects

Bhui, R.

Publications and source records attributed to Bhui, R..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2019

Rationally inattentive intertemporal choice

Discounting of future rewards is traditionally interpreted as evidence for an intrinsic preference in favor of sooner rewards. However, temporal discounting can also arise from internal uncertainty in value representations of future events, if one assumes that noisy mental simulations of the future are rationally combined with prior beliefs. Here, we further develop this idea by considering how simulation noise may be adaptively modulated by task demands, based on principles of rational inattention. We show how the optimal allocation of mental effort can give rise to the magnitude effect in intertemporal choice. In a re-analysis of two prior data sets, and in a new experiment, we reveal several behavioral signatures of this novel theoretical account, tying choice stochasticity to the magnitude effect. We conclude that some aspects of temporal discounting may result from a cognitively plausible adaptive response to the costs of information processing.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2018

Exploration in the wild

Making good decisions requires people to appropriately explore their available options and generalize what they have learned. While computational models have successfully explained exploratory behavior in constrained laboratory tasks, it is unclear to what extent these models generalize to complex real world choice problems. We investigate the factors guiding exploratory behavior in a data set consisting of 195,333 customers placing 1,613,967 orders from a large online food delivery service. We find important hallmarks of adaptive exploration and generalization, which we analyze using computational models. We find evidence for several theoretical predictions: (1) customers engage in uncertainty-directed exploration, (2) they adjust their level of exploration to the average restaurant quality in a city, and (3) they use feature-based generalization to guide exploration towards promising restaurants. Our results provide new evidence that people use sophisticated strategies to explore complex, real-world environments.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2017

Decision by sampling implements efficient coding of psychoeconomic functions

The theory of decision by sampling (DbS) proposes that an attributes subjective value is its rank within a sample of attribute values retrieved from memory. This can account for instances of context dependence beyond the reach of classic theories which assume stable preferences. In this paper, we provide a normative justification for DbS that is based on the principle of efficient coding. The efficient representation of information in a noiseless communication channel is characterized by a uniform response distribution, which the rank transformation implements. However, cognitive limitations imply that decision samples are finite, introducing noise. Efficient coding in a noisy channel requires smoothing of the signal, a principle that leads to a new generalization of DbS. This generalization is closely connected to range-frequency theory, and helps descriptively account for a wider set of behavioral observations, such as how context sensitivity varies with the number of available response categories.

animal behavior and cognition↗