Abrupt and spontaneous strategy switches emerge in simple regularised neural networks.

ABSTRACT: Humans sometimes have an insight that leads to a sudden and drastic performance improvement on the task they are working on. Sudden strategy adaptations are often linked to insights, considered to be a unique aspect of human cognition tied to complex processes such as creativity or meta-cognitive reasoning. Here, we take a learning perspective and ask whether insight-like behaviour can occur in simple artificial neural networks, even when the models only learn to form input-output associations through gradual gradient descent. We compared learning dynamics in humans and regularised neural networks in a perceptual decision task that included a hidden regularity to solve the task more efficiently. Our results show that only some humans discover this regularity, and that behaviour is marked b

SUBMITTER: Lowe AT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11527165 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature