Chunking as a rational solution to the speed-accuracy trade-off in a serial reaction time task.

ABSTRACT: When exposed to perceptual and motor sequences, people are able to gradually identify patterns within and form a compact internal description of the sequence. One proposal of how sequences can be compressed is people's ability to form chunks. We study people's chunking behavior in a serial reaction time task. We relate chunk representation with sequence statistics and task demands, and propose a rational model of chunking that rearranges and concatenates its representation to jointly optimize for accuracy and speed. Our model predicts that participants should chunk more if chunks are indeed part of the generative model underlying a task and should, on average, learn longer chunks when optimizing for speed than optimizing for accuracy. We test these predictions in two experiments. In the fi

SUBMITTER: Wu S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10175304 | biostudies-literature | 2023 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature