Paradoxical choice and the value of information in animals
<p>Normative accounts of decision-making posit that information derives value by enabling decision-makers to efficiently acquire beneficial external commodities such as food. However, an experimental protocol referred to as ‘paradoxical choice’ shows that a range of bird and mammal species, in...
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2023
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| _version_ | 1811139849999089664 |
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| author | Ajuwon, V |
| author2 | Kacelnik, A |
| author_facet | Kacelnik, A Ajuwon, V |
| author_sort | Ajuwon, V |
| collection | OXFORD |
| description | <p>Normative accounts of decision-making posit that information derives value by enabling decision-makers to efficiently acquire beneficial external commodities such as food. However, an experimental protocol referred to as ‘paradoxical choice’ shows that a range of bird and mammal species, including humans, appear to value information about upcoming events that they cannot use, as if their information-seeking behaviour was driven by an intrinsic drive to resolve uncertainty, or ‘curiosity’. Using rats and goldfish as models, I investigate the paradoxical choice phenomenon experimentally and interpret it theoretically.</p>
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<p>In Chapter 1, I use three variations of the paradoxical choice protocol in rats to investigate the psychological mechanisms underlying information-seeking behaviour. My results indicate that an intrinsic drive to resolve uncertainty, as well as a drive to generate signals for appetitive outcomes, may act simultaneously to generate preferences.</p>
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<p>In Chapter 2, I report three experiments designed to examine how preferences for advanced information about upcoming rewards influence decision-making under risk in rats. I found that while subjects are generally risk averse, the provision of informative stimuli in the risky alternative promotes risk proneness.</p>
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<p>In Chapter 3, I present <em>GoFish</em>, a novel, open-source platform, that facilitates automated and closed-loop learning experiments on fish and other aquatic species. As an illustration and test of its use, I present the results of 2 experiments on discrimination learning, reversal, and choice in goldfish.</p>
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<p>In Chapter 4, I use <em>GoFish</em> and the paradoxical choice protocol to explore non-instrumental information-seeking in fish (goldfish) for the first time. Like in birds and mammals, fish learned the programmed contingencies and showed rational preferences between stimuli predicting differing reward probabilities, but, unlike the other vertebrates studied so far, this did not translate into a preference for signalled outcomes.</p>
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<p>Together, my results expose the extent to which purely reward-maximizing theorizing is insufficient to account for behaviour. This thesis highlights the need to interlink functional and mechanistic accounts of value-based decision-making incorporating empirical insights about information-seeking, in order to understand how natural selection has shaped behaviour.</p> |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-25T04:12:38Z |
| format | Thesis |
| id | oxford-uuid:b389f104-6b1b-4a82-8ae7-f540d6fc0d10 |
| institution | University of Oxford |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-25T04:12:38Z |
| publishDate | 2023 |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | oxford-uuid:b389f104-6b1b-4a82-8ae7-f540d6fc0d102024-07-05T12:36:25ZParadoxical choice and the value of information in animalsThesishttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_db06uuid:b389f104-6b1b-4a82-8ae7-f540d6fc0d10EnglishHyrax Deposit2023Ajuwon, VKacelnik, AWalton, MTaylor, G<p>Normative accounts of decision-making posit that information derives value by enabling decision-makers to efficiently acquire beneficial external commodities such as food. However, an experimental protocol referred to as ‘paradoxical choice’ shows that a range of bird and mammal species, including humans, appear to value information about upcoming events that they cannot use, as if their information-seeking behaviour was driven by an intrinsic drive to resolve uncertainty, or ‘curiosity’. Using rats and goldfish as models, I investigate the paradoxical choice phenomenon experimentally and interpret it theoretically.</p> <br> <p>In Chapter 1, I use three variations of the paradoxical choice protocol in rats to investigate the psychological mechanisms underlying information-seeking behaviour. My results indicate that an intrinsic drive to resolve uncertainty, as well as a drive to generate signals for appetitive outcomes, may act simultaneously to generate preferences.</p> <br> <p>In Chapter 2, I report three experiments designed to examine how preferences for advanced information about upcoming rewards influence decision-making under risk in rats. I found that while subjects are generally risk averse, the provision of informative stimuli in the risky alternative promotes risk proneness.</p> <br> <p>In Chapter 3, I present <em>GoFish</em>, a novel, open-source platform, that facilitates automated and closed-loop learning experiments on fish and other aquatic species. As an illustration and test of its use, I present the results of 2 experiments on discrimination learning, reversal, and choice in goldfish.</p> <br> <p>In Chapter 4, I use <em>GoFish</em> and the paradoxical choice protocol to explore non-instrumental information-seeking in fish (goldfish) for the first time. Like in birds and mammals, fish learned the programmed contingencies and showed rational preferences between stimuli predicting differing reward probabilities, but, unlike the other vertebrates studied so far, this did not translate into a preference for signalled outcomes.</p> <br> <p>Together, my results expose the extent to which purely reward-maximizing theorizing is insufficient to account for behaviour. This thesis highlights the need to interlink functional and mechanistic accounts of value-based decision-making incorporating empirical insights about information-seeking, in order to understand how natural selection has shaped behaviour.</p> |
| spellingShingle | Ajuwon, V Paradoxical choice and the value of information in animals |
| title | Paradoxical choice and the value of information in animals |
| title_full | Paradoxical choice and the value of information in animals |
| title_fullStr | Paradoxical choice and the value of information in animals |
| title_full_unstemmed | Paradoxical choice and the value of information in animals |
| title_short | Paradoxical choice and the value of information in animals |
| title_sort | paradoxical choice and the value of information in animals |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT ajuwonv paradoxicalchoiceandthevalueofinformationinanimals |