The structure and development of explore-exploit decision making.

ABSTRACT: A critical component of human learning reflects the balance people must achieve between focusing on the utility of what they know versus openness to what they have yet to experience. How individuals decide whether to explore new options versus exploit known options has garnered growing interest in recent years. Yet, the component processes underlying decisions to explore and whether these processes change across development remain poorly understood. By contrasting a variety of tasks that measure exploration in slightly different ways, we found that decisions about whether to explore reflect (a) random exploration that is not explicitly goal-directed and (b) directed exploration to purposefully reduce uncertainty. While these components similarly characterized the decision-making of both yo

SUBMITTER: Harms MB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11275514 | biostudies-literature | 2024 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature