Sensitivity to the Sampling Process Emerges From the Principle of Efficiency
Humans can seamlessly infer other people's preferences, based on what they do. Broadly, two types of accounts have been proposed to explain different aspects of this ability. The first account focuses on spatial information: Agents' efficient navigation in space reveals what they like. The...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Wiley-Blackwell
2020
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/128652 |
| _version_ | 1811084479828066304 |
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| author | Jara-Ettinger, Julian Sun, Felix Schulz, Laura E Tenenbaum, Joshua B |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences Jara-Ettinger, Julian Sun, Felix Schulz, Laura E Tenenbaum, Joshua B |
| author_sort | Jara-Ettinger, Julian |
| collection | MIT |
| description | Humans can seamlessly infer other people's preferences, based on what they do. Broadly, two types of accounts have been proposed to explain different aspects of this ability. The first account focuses on spatial information: Agents' efficient navigation in space reveals what they like. The second account focuses on statistical information: Uncommon choices reveal stronger preferences. Together, these two lines of research suggest that we have two distinct capacities for inferring preferences. Here we propose that this is not the case, and that spatial-based and statistical-based preference inferences can be explained by the assumption that agents are efficient alone. We show that people's sensitivity to spatial and statistical information when they infer preferences is best predicted by a computational model of the principle of efficiency, and that this model outperforms dual-system models, even when the latter are fit to participant judgments. Our results suggest that, as adults, a unified understanding of agency under the principle of efficiency underlies our ability to infer preferences. Copyright ©2018 Cognitive Science Society, Inc. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T12:51:27Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/128652 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T12:51:27Z |
| publishDate | 2020 |
| publisher | Wiley-Blackwell |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1286522022-09-28T10:30:16Z Sensitivity to the Sampling Process Emerges From the Principle of Efficiency Jara-Ettinger, Julian Sun, Felix Schulz, Laura E Tenenbaum, Joshua B Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences Humans can seamlessly infer other people's preferences, based on what they do. Broadly, two types of accounts have been proposed to explain different aspects of this ability. The first account focuses on spatial information: Agents' efficient navigation in space reveals what they like. The second account focuses on statistical information: Uncommon choices reveal stronger preferences. Together, these two lines of research suggest that we have two distinct capacities for inferring preferences. Here we propose that this is not the case, and that spatial-based and statistical-based preference inferences can be explained by the assumption that agents are efficient alone. We show that people's sensitivity to spatial and statistical information when they infer preferences is best predicted by a computational model of the principle of efficiency, and that this model outperforms dual-system models, even when the latter are fit to participant judgments. Our results suggest that, as adults, a unified understanding of agency under the principle of efficiency underlies our ability to infer preferences. Copyright ©2018 Cognitive Science Society, Inc. NSF-STC award (CCF-1231216) 2020-11-25T14:52:46Z 2020-11-25T14:52:46Z 2018-02 2018-01 2019-10-04T11:13:43Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 1551-6709 https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/128652 Jara‐Ettinger, Julian et al., "Sensitivity to the Sampling Process Emerges From the Principle of Efficiency." Cognitive Science 42, S1 (May 2018): 270-286 doi. 10.1111/cogs.12596 ©2018 Authors en https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/COGS.12596 Cognitive Science Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ application/pdf Wiley-Blackwell Other repository |
| spellingShingle | Jara-Ettinger, Julian Sun, Felix Schulz, Laura E Tenenbaum, Joshua B Sensitivity to the Sampling Process Emerges From the Principle of Efficiency |
| title | Sensitivity to the Sampling Process Emerges From the Principle of Efficiency |
| title_full | Sensitivity to the Sampling Process Emerges From the Principle of Efficiency |
| title_fullStr | Sensitivity to the Sampling Process Emerges From the Principle of Efficiency |
| title_full_unstemmed | Sensitivity to the Sampling Process Emerges From the Principle of Efficiency |
| title_short | Sensitivity to the Sampling Process Emerges From the Principle of Efficiency |
| title_sort | sensitivity to the sampling process emerges from the principle of efficiency |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/128652 |
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