Patch leaving in humans: can a generalist adapt its rules to dispersal of items across patches?

• Published in: Animal behaviour Vol. 75; no. 4; pp. 1331 - 1349
• Main Authors: Hutchinson, John M.C., Wilke, Andreas, Todd, Peter M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Kent Elsevier Ltd 01.04.2008; Elsevier; Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Ltd
• Subjects: Animal behavior; Animal ethology; Biological and medical sciences; Computer & video games; Concorde fallacy; Decision making; delay minimization; Dispersal; evolutionary psychology; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; giving-up time; Human subjects; incremental rule; marginal value theorem; optimal foraging; Ponds; Prey; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; rule of thumb; simple heuristic; task switching; Concorde fallacy; delay minimization; giving-up time; task switching; rule of thumb; simple heuristic; evolutionary psychology; incremental rule; optimal foraging; marginal value theorem; Human; Rule; Young departure; Dispersion; Adaptation

We used a computer game to examine three aspects of patch-leaving decisions in humans: how well do humans perform compared to the optimal policy, can they adjust their behaviour adaptively in response to different distributions of prey across patches and on what cues are their decisions based? Subje...