Matching Behavior as a Tradeoff Between Reward Maximization and Demands on Neural Computation.

ABSTRACT: When faced with a choice, humans and animals commonly distribute their behavior in proportion to the frequency of payoff of each option. Such behavior is referred to as matching and has been captured by the matching law. However, matching is not a general law of economic choice. Matching in its strict sense seems to be specifically observed in tasks whose properties make matching an optimal or a near-optimal strategy. We engaged monkeys in a foraging task in which matching was not the optimal strategy. Over-matching the proportions of the mean offered reward magnitudes would yield more reward than matching, yet, surprisingly, the animals almost exactly matched them. To gain insight into this phenomenon, we modeled the animals' decision-making using a mechanistic model. The model accounted

SUBMITTER: Kubanek J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4654444 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature