Humans account for cognitive costs when finding shortcuts: An information-theoretic analysis of navigation.

ABSTRACT: When faced with navigating back somewhere we have been before we might either retrace our steps or seek a shorter path. Both choices have costs. Here, we ask whether it is possible to characterize formally the choice of navigational plans as a bounded rational process that trades off the quality of the plan (e.g., its length) and the cognitive cost required to find and implement it. We analyze the navigation strategies of two groups of people that are firstly trained to follow a "default policy" taking a route in a virtual maze and then asked to navigate to various known goal destinations, either in the way they want ("Go To Goal") or by taking novel shortcuts ("Take Shortcut"). We address these wayfinding problems using InfoRL: an information-theoretic approach that formalizes the cogniti

SUBMITTER: Lancia GL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9851521 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature