title: Fishing for the right words: decision rules for human foraging behavior in internal search tasks.
abstract: Animals depleting one patch of resources must decide when to leave and switch to a fresh patch. Foraging theory has predicted various decision mechanisms; which is best depends on environmental variation in patch quality. Previously we tested whether these mechanisms underlie human decision making when foraging for external resources; here we test whether humans behave similarly in a cognitive task seeking internally generated solutions. Subjects searched for meaningful words made from random letter sequences, and as their success rate declined, they could opt to switch to a fresh sequence. As in the external foraging context, time since the previous success and the interval preceding it had a major influence on when subjects switched. Subjects also used the commonness of sequence letters as a proximal cue to patch quality that influenced when to switch. Contrary to optimality predictions, switching decisions were independent of whether sequences differed little or widely in quality.
authors.affiliation: Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition, Max Planck Institute for Human Development Center for Behavior, Evolution and Culture, UCLA Department of Anthropology State Museum of Natural History Görlitz School of Informatics and Cognitive Science Program, Indiana University.
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Wilke
authors.forename: John M C
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Hutchinson
authors.forename: Peter M
authors.initials: PM
authors.lastname: Todd
authors.forename: Uwe
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Czienskowski