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Rational use of cognitive resources in human planning

Nature Human Behaviour volume 6, pages 1112–1125 (2022)Cite this article

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A Publisher Correction to this article was published on 16 June 2022

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Abstract

Making good decisions requires thinking ahead, but the huge number of actions and outcomes one could consider makes exhaustive planning infeasible for computationally constrained agents, such as humans. How people are nevertheless able to solve novel problems when their actions have long-reaching consequences is thus a long-standing question in cognitive science. To address this question, we propose a model of resource-constrained planning that allows us to derive optimal planning strategies. We find that previously proposed heuristics such as best-first search are near optimal under some circumstances but not others. In a mouse-tracking paradigm, we show that people adapt their planning strategies accordingly, planning in a manner that is broadly consistent with the optimal model but not with any single heuristic model. We also find systematic deviations from the optimal model that might result from additional cognitive constraints that are yet to be uncovered.

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Fig. 1: Formalizing planning under computational constraints.
Fig. 2: Experimental task.
Fig. 3: Experiment 1 results.
Fig. 4: Experiment 2 results.
Fig. 5: Experiment 3 results.
Fig. 6: Experiment 4 results.

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Data availability

The anonymized data that support the findings of this study are available on the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/6venh/).

Code availability

The modelling and analysis code is available on the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/6venh/).

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by grant number ONR MURI N00014-13-1-0341, grant number AFOSR 9550-18-1-0077, a grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation and a grant from Facebook Reality Labs. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.

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Author notes

  1. These authors jointly supervised this work: Thomas L. Griffiths, Falk Lieder.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

    Frederick Callaway, Bas van Opheusden, Paul M. Krueger & Thomas L. Griffiths

  2. Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Sayan Gul

  3. Department of Cognitive Sciences, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA

    Priyam Das

  4. Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Tübingen, Germany

    Falk Lieder

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  1. Frederick Callaway
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Contributions

F.C., F.L., B.v.O. and T.L.G. designed the studies. F.C., F.L. and T.L.G. devised the main model. F.C., S.G., P.D. and B.v.O. devised the alternative models. F.C. implemented the model, collected the data, performed the analyses and drafted the manuscript. T.L.G. and F.L. supervised all aspects of the project. All authors discussed the results and revised the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Frederick Callaway.

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Callaway, F., van Opheusden, B., Gul, S. et al. Rational use of cognitive resources in human planning. Nat Hum Behav 6, 1112–1125 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01332-8

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