Foraging across the life span: is there a reduction in exploration with aging?
TL;DR: Overall, the evidence suggests that foraging behavior may undergo significant changes across the life span across internal and external search, and finds evidence of a trend toward reduced exploration with increased age.
Abstract: Does foraging change across the life span, and in particular, with aging? We report data from two foraging tasks used to investigate age differences in search in external environments as well as internal search in memory. Overall, the evidence suggests that foraging behavior may undergo significant changes across the life span across internal and external search. In particular, we find evidence of a trend towards reduced exploration with increased age. We discuss these findings in light of theories that postulate a link between aging and reductions in novelty seeking and exploratory behavior.
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01 Jul 2015
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore how potential tradeoffs depend on the conceptualization of exploration and exploitation, the influencing environmental, social, and individual factors, the scale at which exploration and exploit are considered, the relationship and types of transitions between the two behaviors, and the goals of the decision maker.
Abstract: Many decisions in the lives of animals and humans require a fine balance between the exploration of different options and the exploitation of their rewards. Do you buy the advertised car, or do you test drive different models? Do you continue feeding from the current patch of flowers, or do you fly off to another one? Do you marry your current partner, or try your luck with someone else? The balance required in these situations is commonly referred to as the exploration– exploitation tradeoff. It features prominently in a wide range of research traditions, including learning, foraging, and decision making literatures. Here, we integrate findings from these and other often-isolated literatures in order to gain a better understand- ing of the possible tradeoffs between exploration and exploitation, and we propose new theoretical insights that might guide future research. Specifically, we explore how potential tradeoffs depend on (a) the conceptualization of exploration and exploitation; (b) the influencing environmental, social, and individual factors; (c) the scale at which exploration and exploitation are considered; (d) the relationship and types of transitions between the 2 behaviors; and (e) the goals of the decision maker. We conclude that exploration and exploitation are best conceptualized as points on a continuum, and that the extent to which an agent’s behavior can be interpreted as exploratory or exploitative depends upon the level of abstraction at which it is considered.
234 citations
TL;DR: This review examines how age-related brain changes influence processes such as attending to and remembering emotional stimuli, regulating emotion, and recognizing emotional expressions, as well as empathy, risk taking, impulsivity, behavior change, and attentional focus.
Abstract: Although aging is associated with clear declines in physical and cognitive processes, emotional functioning fares relatively well. Consistent with this behavioral profile, two core emotional brain regions, the amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, show little structural and functional decline in aging, compared with other regions. However, emotional processes depend on interacting systems of neurotransmitters and brain regions that go beyond these structures. This review examines how age-related brain changes influence processes such as attending to and remembering emotional stimuli, regulating emotion, and recognizing emotional expressions, as well as empathy, risk taking, impulsivity, behavior change, and attentional focus.
208 citations
Cites result from "Foraging across the life span: is t..."
...Not much is known yet about how age-related changes in the LC-noradrenaline system might relate to the likelihood of exploring new options versus remaining fixated on current choices, but it is an interesting avenue for future research, especially given findings of less exploratory behavior (Mata et al. 2013) and less information seeking during decision making (Mather 2006) among older than younger adults....
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TL;DR: The aim of the review is to promote the view that predators do not simply learn to avoid aposematic prey, but rather make adaptive decisions about both when to gather information about defended prey and when to include them in their diets.
Abstract: The question, "Why should prey advertise their presence to predators using warning coloration?" has been asked for over 150 years. It is now widely acknowledged that defended prey use conspicuous or distinctive colors to advertise their toxicity to would-be predators: a defensive strategy known as aposematism. One of the main approaches to understanding the ecology and evolution of aposematism and mimicry (where species share the same color pattern) has been to study how naive predators learn to associate prey’s visual signals with the noxious effects of their toxins. However, learning to associate a warning signal with a defense is only one aspect of what predators need to do to enable them to make adaptive foraging decisions when faced with aposematic prey and their mimics. The aim of our review is to promote the view that predators do not simply learn to avoid aposematic prey, but rather make adaptive decisions about both when to gather information about defended prey and when to include them in their diets. In doing so, we reveal what surprisingly little we know about what predators learn about aposematic prey and how they use that information when foraging. We highlight how a better understanding of predator cognition could advance theoretical and empirical work in the field.
107 citations
TL;DR: The explore/exploit trade-off has been studied extensively in behavioral ecology and computational neuroscience, but is relatively new to the field of psychiatry as discussed by the authors, which can offer psychiatry research a new approach to studying motivation, outcome valuation, and effort-related processes which are disrupted in many mental and emotional disorders.
102 citations
References
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TL;DR: This paper found negative correlations between maximizing and happiness, optimism, self-esteem, and life satisfaction, and positive correlations between maximization and depression, perfectionism, and regret, and found that maximizers are less satisfied than non-maximizers with consumer decisions, and more likely to engage in social comparison.
Abstract: Can people feel worse off as the options they face increase? The present studies suggest that some people--maximizers--can. Study 1 reported a Maximization Scale, which measures individual differences in desire to maximize. Seven samples revealed negative correlations between maximization and happiness, optimism, self-esteem, and life satisfaction, and positive correlations between maximization and depression, perfectionism, and regret. Study 2 found maximizers less satisfied than nonmaximizers (satisficers) with consumer decisions, and more likely to engage in social comparison. Study 3 found maximizers more adversely affected by upward social comparison. Study 4 found maximizers more sensitive to regret and less satisfied in an ultimatum bargaining game. The interaction between maximizing and choice is discussed in terms of regret, adaptation, and self-blame.
1,151 citations
TL;DR: The extension of reinforcement learning models to free-operant tasks unites psychologically and computationally inspired ideas about the role of tonic dopamine in striatum, explaining from a normative point of view why higher levels of dopamine might be associated with more vigorous responding.
Abstract: Rationale Dopamine neurotransmission has long been known to exert a powerful influence over the vigor, strength, or rate of responding. However, there exists no clear understanding of the computational foundation for this effect; predominant accounts of dopamine’s computational function focus on a role for phasic dopamine in controlling the discrete selection between different actions and have nothing to say about response vigor or indeed the freeoperant tasks in which it is typically measured. Objectives We seek to accommodate free-operant behavioral tasks within the realm of models of optimal control and thereby capture how dopaminergic and motivational manipulations affect response vigor. Methods We construct an average reward reinforcement learning model in which subjects choose both which action to perform and also the latency with which to perform it. Optimal control balances the costs of acting quickly against the benefits of getting reward earlier and thereby chooses a best response latency. Results In this framework, the long-run average rate of reward plays a key role as an opportunity cost and mediates motivational influences on rates and vigor of responding. We review evidence suggesting that the average reward rate is reported by tonic levels of dopamine putatively in the nucleus accumbens. Conclusions Our extension of reinforcement learning models to free-operant tasks unites psychologically and computationally inspired ideas about the role of tonic dopamine in striatum, explaining from a normative point of view why higher levels of dopamine might be associated with more vigorous responding.
1,007 citations
"Foraging across the life span: is t..." refers background in this paper
...Some have suggested that tonic dopamine levels in striatum encode the subjective value of time (Niv et al., 2006)....
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TL;DR: Prioritizing emotion-regulatory goals was associated with greater social satisfaction and less perceived strain with others when participants perceived their future as limited, and priority of goal domains was found to be differently associated with the size, composition, and perceived quality of personal networks depending on FTP.
Abstract: On the basis of postulates derived from socioemotional selectivity theory, the authors explored the extent to which future time perspective (FTP) is related to social motivation, and to the composition and perceived quality of personal networks. Four hundred eighty German participants with ages ranging from 20 to 90 years took part in the study. In 2 card-sort tasks, participants indicated their partner preference and goal priority. Participants also completed questionnaires on personal networks and social satisfaction. Older people, as a group, perceived their future time as more limited than younger people. Individuals who perceived future time as being limited prioritized emotionally meaningful goals (e.g., generativity, emotion regulation), whereas individuals who perceived their futures as open-ended prioritized instrumental or knowledge-related goals. Priority of goal domains was found to be differently associated with the size, composition, and perceived quality of personal networks depending on FTP. Prioritizing emotion-regulatory goals was associated with greater social satisfaction and less perceived strain with others when participants perceived their future as limited. Findings underscore the importance of FTP in the self-regulation of social relationships and the subjective experience associated with them.
999 citations
"Foraging across the life span: is t..." refers background in this paper
...…of the link between aging and exploration suggest that reductions in exploratory tendencies may be accompanied by decreased subjective value given to exploration, which may be indexed by measures such as future time perspective (Lang and Carstensen, 2002) or maximizing (Harbison et al., 2009)....
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...Adaptive explanations of the link between aging and exploration suggest that reductions in exploratory tendencies may be accompanied by decreased subjective value given to exploration, which may be indexed by measures such as future time perspective (Lang and Carstensen, 2002) or maximizing (Harbison et al....
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...…= 99) completed a number of questionnaire measures that we reasoned could be related to exploratory behavior, including risk-taking in the investment and gambling domain (Weber et al., 2002), maximization tendencies (Schwartz et al., 2002), and future time perspective (Lang and Carstensen, 2002)....
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...Consequently, motivational variables such as future time perspective (Lang and Carstensen, 2002; Carstensen, 2006) and maximizing (Dougherty and Harbison, 2007) may index the subjective value of exploration and thus be linked to giving-up times....
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..., 2002), and future time perspective (Lang and Carstensen, 2002)....
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TL;DR: A brief review of work on exploration versus exploitation is provided, how exploration and exploitation may be mediated in the brain is discussed and some promising future directions for research are highlighted.
Abstract: Many large and small decisions we make in our daily lives—which ice cream to choose, what research projects to pursue, which partner to marry—require an exploration of alternatives before committing to and exploiting the benefits of a particular choice. Furthermore, many decisions require re-evaluation, and further exploration of alternatives, in the face of changing needs or circumstances. That is, often our decisions depend on a higher level choice: whether to exploit well known but possibly suboptimal alternatives or to explore risky but potentially more profitable ones. How adaptive agents choose between exploitation and exploration remains an important and open question that has received relatively limited attention in the behavioural and brain sciences. The choice could depend on a number of factors, including the familiarity of the environment, how quickly the environment is likely to change and the relative value of exploiting known sources of reward versus the cost of reducing uncertainty through exploration. There is no known generally optimal solution to the exploration versus exploitation problem, and a solution to the general case may indeed not be possible. However, there have been formal analyses of the optimal policy under constrained circumstances. There have also been specific suggestions of how humans and animals may respond to this problem under particular experimental conditions as well as proposals about the brain mechanisms involved. Here, we provide a brief review of this work, discuss how exploration and exploitation may be mediated in the brain and highlight some promising future directions for research.
925 citations
"Foraging across the life span: is t..." refers background in this paper
...Given the role of catecholamines in modulating learning, novelty seeking, and explorative behavior (Hills, 2006; Cohen et al., 2007; Doya, 2008; Eppinger et al., 2011), age-related deficits in catecholaminergic modulation could be expected to lead to age differences in foraging....
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...…interest and progress of late in understanding the cognitive and neural basis of foraging www.frontiersin.org April 2013 | Volume 7 | Article 53 | 1 decisions (Pirolli and Card, 1999; Cohen et al., 2007; Payne et al., 2007; Hills et al., 2010, 2012; Hayden et al., 2011; Kolling et al., 2012)....
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...Third, there is evidence for domain-general neural mechanisms underlying search processes that are likely shared by different species (Daw et al., 2006; Hills, 2006; Cohen et al., 2007; Hayden et al., 2011)....
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TL;DR: A paradigm shift towards cross-level conceptions is needed in order to obtain an integrative understanding of cognitive aging phenomena that cuts across neural, information-processing, and behavioral levels, and empirical data at these different levels are reviewed.
807 citations
"Foraging across the life span: is t..." refers background in this paper
...Age-related structural deterioration of the substantia nigra and ventral tegmental area seem to have implications for overall catecholaminergic neuromodulation (Arnsten, 1998; Li et al., 2001)....
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