Optimal behavioral hierarchy

Human behavior has long been recognized to display hierarchical structure: actions fit together into subtasks, which cohere into extended goal-directed activities. Arranging actions hierarchically has well established benefits, allowing behaviors to be represented efficiently by the brain, and allow...

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Published inPLoS computational biology Vol. 10; no. 8; p. e1003779
Main Authors Solway, Alec, Diuk, Carlos, Córdova, Natalia, Yee, Debbie, Barto, Andrew G, Niv, Yael, Botvinick, Matthew M
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States Public Library of Science 01.08.2014
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Subjects
Adolescent
Adult
Behavior
Behavior - physiology
Behavioral assessment
Biology and Life Sciences
Brain
Computational Biology
Computer and Information Sciences
Decomposition
Experiments
Female
Goals
Humans
Learning - physiology
Male
Methods
Middle Aged
Models, Neurological
Physiological aspects
Social Sciences
Young Adult
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Summary:Human behavior has long been recognized to display hierarchical structure: actions fit together into subtasks, which cohere into extended goal-directed activities. Arranging actions hierarchically has well established benefits, allowing behaviors to be represented efficiently by the brain, and allowing solutions to new tasks to be discovered easily. However, these payoffs depend on the particular way in which actions are organized into a hierarchy, the specific way in which tasks are carved up into subtasks. We provide a mathematical account for what makes some hierarchies better than others, an account that allows an optimal hierarchy to be identified for any set of tasks. We then present results from four behavioral experiments, suggesting that human learners spontaneously discover optimal action hierarchies.
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Current address: Facebook Inc., Menlo Park, California, United States of America
Conceived and designed the experiments: AS CD NC DY MMB AGB YN. Performed the experiments: AS CD DY NC. Analyzed the data: AS CD DY NC MMB. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: AS CD DY NC MMB YN AGB. Wrote the paper: AS CD NC DY MMB YN AGB.
The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
ISSN:1553-7358
1553-734X
1553-7358
DOI:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003779