What's in a name: The role of verbalization in reinforcement learning.

ABSTRACT: (e.g., characters or fractals) and concrete stimuli (e.g., pictures of everyday objects) are used interchangeably in the reinforcement-learning literature. Yet, it is unclear whether the same learning processes underlie learning from these different stimulus types. In two preregistered experiments (N = 50 each), we assessed whether abstract and concrete stimuli yield different reinforcement-learning performance and whether this difference can be explained by verbalization. We argued that concrete stimuli are easier to verbalize than abstract ones, and that people therefore can appeal to the phonological loop, a subcomponent of the working-memory system responsible for storing and rehearsing verbal information, while learning. To test whether this verbalization aids reinforcement-learning p

SUBMITTER: Schaaf JV 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11680654 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature