Simple Plans or Sophisticated Habits? State, Transition and Learning Interactions in the Two-Step Task.

ABSTRACT: The recently developed 'two-step' behavioural task promises to differentiate model-based from model-free reinforcement learning, while generating neurophysiologically-friendly decision datasets with parametric variation of decision variables. These desirable features have prompted its widespread adoption. Here, we analyse the interactions between a range of different strategies and the structure of transitions and outcomes in order to examine constraints on what can be learned from behavioural performance. The task involves a trade-off between the need for stochasticity, to allow strategies to be discriminated, and a need for determinism, so that it is worth subjects' investment of effort to exploit the contingencies optimally. We show through simulation that under certain conditions model

SUBMITTER: Akam T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4686094 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature