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Warburton, M. orcid.org/0000-0001-5309-4424, Brookes, J., Hasan, M. et al. (6 more authors) (2024) Getting stuck in a rut as an emergent feature of a dynamic decision-making system. Royal Society Open Science, 11 (4). 231550. ISSN 2054-5703
Abstract
Human sensorimotor decision making has a tendency to get ‘stuck in a rut’, being biased towards selecting a previously implemented action structure (hysteresis). Existing explanations propose this is the consequence of an agent efficiently modifying an existing plan, rather than creating a new plan from scratch. Instead, we propose that hysteresis is an emergent property of a system learning from the consequences of its actions. To examine this, 152 participants moved a cursor to a target on a tablet device while avoiding an obstacle. Hysteresis was observed when the obstacle moved sequentially across the screen between trials, whereby the participant continued moving around the same side of the obstacle despite it now requiring a larger movement than the alternative. Two further experiments (n = 20) showed an attenuation when time and resource constraints were eased. We created a simple computational model capturing probabilistic estimate updating that showed the same patterns of results. This provides, to our knowledge, the first computational demonstration of how sensorimotor decision making can get ‘stuck in a rut’ through the updating of the probability estimates associated with actions.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2024 The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | decision-making; hysteresis; choice bias |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Medicine and Health (Leeds) > School of Psychology (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) EP/R031193/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 04 Apr 2024 10:42 |
Last Modified: | 19 Nov 2024 16:07 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | The Royal Society |
Identification Number: | 10.1098/rsos.231550 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:211141 |
Available Versions of this Item
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Getting stuck in a rut as an emergent feature of a dynamic decision-making system. (deposited 19 Nov 2024 16:05)
- Getting stuck in a rut as an emergent feature of a dynamic decision-making system. (deposited 04 Apr 2024 10:42) [Currently Displayed]