Informational Entropy Threshold as a Physical Mechanism for Explaining Tree-like Decision Making in Humans
Cristín, Javier (Universita' Sapienza. Dipartimento di Fisica)
Méndez López, Vicenç (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Física)
Campos, Daniel (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Física)

Data:	2022
Resum:	While approaches based on physical grounds (such as the drift-diffusion model-DDM) have been exhaustively used in psychology and neuroscience to describe perceptual decision making in humans, similar approaches to complex situations, such as sequential (tree-like) decisions, are still scarce. For such scenarios that involve a reflective prospection of future options, we offer a plausible mechanism based on the idea that subjects can carry out an internal computation of the uncertainty about the different options available, which is computed through the corresponding Shannon entropy. When the amount of information gathered through sensory evidence is enough to reach a given threshold in the entropy, this will trigger the decision. Experimental evidence in favor of this entropy-based mechanism was provided by exploring human performance during navigation through a maze on a computer screen monitored with the help of eye trackers. In particular, our analysis allows us to prove that (i) prospection is effectively used by humans during such navigation tasks, and an indirect quantification of the level of prospection used is attainable; in addition, (ii) the distribution of decision times during the task exhibits power-law tails, a feature that our entropy-based mechanism is able to explain, unlike traditional (DDM-like) frameworks.
Ajuts:	Agencia Estatal de Investigación CGL2016-78156-C2-2-R European Commission 785932
Drets:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Llengua:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Matèria:	Decision making ; Entropy ; Eye-tracking
Publicat a:	Entropy, Vol. 24, Issue 12 (December 2022) , art. 1819, ISSN 1099-4300

DOI: 10.3390/e24121819
PMID: 36554223

16 p, 3.2 MB

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