One piece at a time: Learning complex rules through self-directed sampling

Doug Markant, Todd M. Gureckis

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Self-directed information sampling—the ability to collect information that one expects to be useful—has been shown to improve the efficiency of concept acquisition for both human and machine learners. However, little is known about how people decide which information is worth learning about. In this study, we examine self-directed learning in a relatively complex rule learning task that gave participants the ability to “design and test” stimuli they wanted to learn about. On a subset of trials we recorded participants’ uncertainty about how to classify the item they had just designed. Analyses of these uncertainty judgments show that people prefer gathering information about items that help refine one rule at a time (i.e., those that fall close to a pairwise category “margin”) rather than items that have the highest overall uncertainty across all relevant hypotheses or rules. Our results give new insight into how people gather information to test currently entertained hypotheses in complex problem solving tasks.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationBuilding Bridges Across Cognitive Sciences Around the World - Proceedings of the 34th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2012
EditorsNaomi Miyake, David Peebles, Richard P. Cooper
PublisherThe Cognitive Science Society
Pages725-730
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9780976831884
StatePublished - 2012
Event34th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Building Bridges Across Cognitive Sciences Around the World, CogSci 2012 - Sapporo, Japan
Duration: Aug 1 2012Aug 4 2012

Publication series

NameBuilding Bridges Across Cognitive Sciences Around the World - Proceedings of the 34th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2012

Conference

Conference34th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Building Bridges Across Cognitive Sciences Around the World, CogSci 2012
Country/TerritoryJapan
CitySapporo
Period8/1/128/4/12

Keywords

  • active learning
  • categorization
  • information search
  • rule learning
  • self-directed learning

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Computer Science Applications
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Cognitive Neuroscience

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