Gaussian processes

Similarities and differences in spatial and non-spatial cognitive maps

There is a resurgence of interest in "cognitive maps" based on recent evidence that the hippocampal-entorhinal system encodes both spatial and non-spatial information, with far-reaching implications for human behavior. Yet little is known about the …

Searching for rewards like a child means less generalization and more directed exploration

How do children and adults differ in their search for rewards? We considered three different hypotheses that attribute developmental differences to (a) children's increased random sampling, (b) more directed exploration toward uncertain options, or …

Active function learning

How do people actively explore to learn about functional relationships, that is, how continuous inputs map onto continuous outputs? We introduce a novel paradigm to investigate information search in continuous, multi-feature function learning …

Connecting conceptual and spatial search via a model of generalization

The idea of a "cognitive map" was originally developed to explain planning and generalization in spatial domains through a representation of inferred relationships between experiences. Recently, new research has suggested similar principles may also …

Generalization guides human exploration in vast decision spaces

From foraging for food to learning complex games, many aspects of human behaviour can be framed as a search problem with a vast space of possible actions. Under finite search horizons, optimal solutions are generally unobtainable. Yet, how do humans …

Mapping the unknown: The spatially correlated multi-armed bandit

We introduce the spatially correlated multi-armed bandit as a task coupling function learning with the exploration-exploitation trade-off. Participants interacted with bi-variate reward functions on a two-dimensional grid, with the goal of either …