Selective maintenance of value information helps resolve the exploration/exploitation dilemma.

ABSTRACT: In natural environments with many options of uncertain value, one faces a difficult tradeoff between exploiting familiar, valuable options or searching for better alternatives. Reinforcement learning models of this exploration/exploitation dilemma typically modulate the rate of exploratory choices or preferentially sample uncertain options. The extent to which such models capture human behavior remains unclear, in part because they do not consider the constraints on remembering what is learned. Using reinforcement-based timing as a motivating example, we show that selectively maintaining high-value actions compresses the amount of information to be tracked in learning, as quantified by Shannon's entropy. In turn, the information content of the value representation controls the balance betw

SUBMITTER: Hallquist MN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6328060 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature