Humans massively depend on communication with others, but this leaves them open to the risk of being accidentally or intentionally misinformed. To ensure that, despite this risk, communication remains advantageous, humans have, we claim, a suite of cognitive mechanisms for epistemic vigilance. Here we outline this claim and consider some of the ways in which epistemic vigilance works in mental and social life by surveying issues, research and theories in different domains of philosophy, linguistics, cognitive psychology and the social sciences.

We propose a framework for including information‐processing bounds in rational analyses. It is an application of bounded optimality (Russell & Subramanian, 1995) to the challenges of developing theories of mechanism and behavior. The framework is based on the idea that behaviors are generated by cognitive mechanisms that are adapted to the structure of not only the environment but also the mind and brain itself. We call the framework computational rationality to emphasize the incorporation of computational mechanism into the definition of (...) rational action. Theories are specified as optimal program problems, defined by an adaptation environment, a bounded machine, and a utility function. Such theories yield different classes of explanation, depending on the extent to which they emphasize adaptation to bounds, and adaptation to some ecology that differs from the immediate local environment. We illustrate this variation with examples from three domains: visual attention in a linguistic task, manual response ordering, and reasoning. We explore the relation of this framework to existing “levels” approaches to explanation, and to other optimality‐based modeling approaches. (shrink)

The statistics of small samples are often quite different from those of large samples, and this needs to be taken into account in assessing the rationality of human behavior. Specifically, in evaluating human responses to environmental statistics, it is the effective environment that matters; that is, the environment actually experienced by the agent needs to be considered, not simply long‐run frequencies. Significant deviations from long‐run statistics may arise through experiential limitations of the agent that stem from resource constraints and/or information‐processing (...) bounds. The article draws together recent work from a number of areas in judgment and decision making ranging from randomness perception (Hahn & Warren, ), information sampling (Hertwig & Pleskac, ; Kareev et al., ), and consequences of choice for exploration or exploitation (e.g., Denrell, ) to demonstrate how proper consideration of these deviations leads to reevaluation of behaviors that are otherwise deemed irrational. (shrink)

The processes underlying motor decision-making have recently caught considerable amount of scientific attention, focusing on the integration of empirical evidence from sensorimotor control research with psychological theories and computational models on decision-making. Empirical studies on motor decision-making suggest that the kinematics of goal-directed reaching movements are sensitive to the level of target uncertainty during movement planning. However, the source of uncertainty as a relevant factor influencing the process of motor decision-making has not been sufficiently considered, yet. In this study, we (...) test the assumption that the source of target uncertainty has an effect on motor decision-making, which can be proven by analyzing movement variability during the time course of movement execution. Ten healthy young adults performed three blocks with 66 trials of goal-directed reaching movements in each block, across which the source and level of reach target uncertainty at movement onset were manipulated (“no uncertainty”, “extrinsic uncertainty”, “intrinsic uncertainty”). Fingertip position of the right index finger was recorded using an optical motion tracking system. Standard kinematic measures (i.e. path length and movement duration) as well as variability of fingertip position across the time course of movement execution and at movement end were analyzed. In line with previous studies, we found that a high level of extrinsic target uncertainty leads to increased overall movement duration, which could be attributed to increased path length in this condition, as compared to intrinsic and no target uncertainty (all p <.001). Movement duration and path length did not show any differences between the latter two conditions. However, the time course analysis of movement variability revealed significant differences between these two conditions, with increased variability of fingertip position in the presence of intrinsic target uncertainty (Condition × Sampling point: p =.01), though considerably less than under high extrinsic target uncertainty (p ≤.001). These findings suggest that both the level and source of uncertainty have a significant effect on the processing of potential action plans during motor decision-making, which can be revealed through the analysis of the time course of movement variability at the end-effector level. (shrink)

It is known that, on average, people adapt their choice of memory strategy to the subjective utility of interaction. What is not known is whether an individual's choices are boundedly optimal. Two experiments are reported that test the hypothesis that an individual's decisions about the distribution of remembering between internal and external resources are boundedly optimal where optimality is defined relative to experience, cognitive constraints, and reward. The theory makes predictions that are tested against data, not fitted to it. The (...) experiments use a no-choice/choice utility learning paradigm where the no-choice phase is used to elicit a profile of each participant's performance across the strategy space and the choice phase is used to test predicted choices within this space. They show that the majority of individuals select strategies that are boundedly optimal. Further, individual differences in what people choose to do are successfully predicted by the analysis. Two issues are discussed: the performance of the minority of participants who did not find boundedly optimal adaptations, and the possibility that individuals anticipate what, with practice, will become a bounded optimal strategy, rather than what is boundedly optimal during training. (shrink)

Human motor learning is governed by a suite of interacting mechanisms each one of which modifies behavior in distinct ways and rely on different neural circuits. In recent years, much attention has been given to one type of motor learning, called motor adaptation. Here, the field has generally focused on the interactions of three mechanisms: sensory prediction error SPE-driven, explicit, and reinforcement learning. Studies of these mechanisms have largely treated them as modular, aiming to model how the outputs of each (...) are combined in the production of overt behavior. However, when examined closely the results of some studies also suggest the existence of additional interactions between the sub-components of each learning mechanism. In this perspective, we propose that these sub-component interactions represent a critical means through which different motor learning mechanisms are combined to produce movement; understanding such interactions is critical to advancing our knowledge of how humans learn new behaviors. We review current literature studying interactions between SPE-driven, explicit, and reinforcement mechanisms of motor learning. We then present evidence of sub-component interactions between SPE-driven and reinforcement learning as well as between SPE-driven and explicit learning from studies of people with cerebellar degeneration. Finally, we discuss the implications of interactions between learning mechanism sub-components for future research in human motor learning. (shrink)