Generative Rationality

In this paper we contrast bounded and ecological rationality with a proposed alternative, generative rationality. Ecological approaches to rationality build on the idea of humans as “intuitive statisticians” while we argue for a more generative conception of humans as “probing organisms.” We first highlight how ecological rationality’s focus on cues and statistics is problematic for two reasons: (a) the problem of cue salience, and (b) the problem of cue novelty in teeming environments. We highlight these problems by revisiting the statistical and cue-based logic that underlies ecological rationality, by discussing its origins in the field of psychophysics (e.g., signal detection, just-noticeable-differences). We work through the most popular experiment in the ecological rationality literature—the city-size task—to illustrate how psychophysical assumptions have been linked to ecological rationality. After highlighting these problems, we contrast ecological rationality with a proposed alternative, generative rationality. Generative rationality builds on biology, in contrast to ecological rationality’s focus on statistics. We argue that in uncertain environments cues are rarely given and available for statistical processing. Environments “teem” with indefinite cues, meanings and potential objects, the salience or relevance of which is scarcely obvious based on their statistical or physical properties. We focus on organism-specificity and organism-directed probing that shapes perception and judgment. Generative rationality departs from existing bounded and ecological approaches in that cue salience is given by top-down factors rather than the bottom-up, statistical or physical properties. A central premise of generative rationality is that cues in teeming environments are noticed or recognized when they serve as cues-for-something, requiring what might be called a “cue-to-clue” transformation. Awareness toward relevant cues needs to be actively cultivated or “grown.” Thus we argue that perception might more productively be seen as the presentation of cues and objects rather than their representation. The generative approach not only applies to seemingly mundane organism (including human) interactions with their environments—as well as organism-object relationships and their embodied nature—but also has significant implications for understanding the emergence of novelty in economic and other uncertain settings. We conclude with a discussion of how our arguments link with—but modify—Herbert Simon’s popular “scissor” metaphor, as it applies to bounded rationality and its implications for decision making in uncertain, teeming environments.

Sustained and Transient Processes in Event-based Prospective Memory in Adolescence and Adulthood

Prospective memory (PM) refers to the cognitive processes associated with remembering to perform an intended action after a delay. Varying the salience of PM cues while keeping the intended response constant, we investigated the extent to which participants relied on strategic monitoring, through sustained, top–down control, or on spontaneous retrieval via transient bottom–up processes. There is mixed evidence regarding developmental improvements in event-based PM performance after the age of 13 years. We compared PM performance and associated sustained and transient neural correlates in 28 typically developing adolescents (12–17 years old) and 19 adults (23–30 years old). Lower PM cue salience associated with slower ongoing task (OT) RTs, reflected by increased μ ex-Gaussian parameter, and sustained increases in frontoparietal activation during OT blocks, both thought to reflect greater proactive control supporting cue monitoring. Behavioral and neural correlates of PM trials were not specifically modulated by cue salience, revealing little difference in reactive control between conditions. The effect of cue salience was similar across age groups, suggesting that adolescents are able to adapt proactive control engagement to PM task demands. Exploratory analyses showed that younger, but not older, adolescents were less accurate and slower in PM trials relative to OT trials than adults and showed greater transient activation in PM trials in an occipito-temporal cluster. These results provide evidence of both mature and still maturing aspects of cognitive processes associated with implementation of an intention after a delay during early adolescence.

Two Studies Investigating Associations Between Sexual Assault Victimization History and Bystander Appraisals of Risk

Across two studies, we examined sexual assault history and bystander appraisals of risk and the moderating roles of danger cue salience (Study 1) and alcohol intoxication (Study 2) in women. Participants (Study 1 = 148, Study 2 = 64) read vignettes ending with cues of nonconsensual sexual activity and an opportunity to intervene. Participants also completed self-report measures of vignette appraisals and history of sexual assault victimization. Across both studies, sexual assault victimization was unassociated with bystander risk appraisals. Alcohol intoxication and subtlety of nonconsent cues did not interact with sexual assault victimization history to influence appraisals of dangerousness.

Semantic Search in Psychosis: Modeling Local Exploitation and Global Exploration

Impairments in category verbal fluency task (VFT) performance have been widely documented in psychosis. These deficits may be due to disturbed “cognitive foraging” in semantic space, in terms of altered salience of cues that influence individuals to search locally within a subcategory of semantically related responses (“clustering”) or globally between subcategories (“switching”). To test this, we conducted a study in which individuals with schizophrenia (n = 21), schizotypal personality traits (n = 25), and healthy controls (n = 40) performed VFT with “animals” as the category. Distributional semantic model Word2Vec computed cosine-based similarities between words according to their statistical usage in a large text corpus. We then applied a validated foraging-based search model to these similarity values to obtain salience indices of frequency-based global search cues and similarity-based local cues. Analyses examined whether diagnosis predicted VFT performance, search strategies, cue salience, and the time taken to switch between vs search within clusters. Compared to control and schizotypal groups, individuals with schizophrenia produced fewer words, switched less, and exhibited higher global cue salience, indicating a selection of more common words when switching to new clusters. Global cue salience negatively associated with vocabulary ability in controls and processing speed in schizophrenia. Lastly, individuals with schizophrenia took a similar amount of time to switch to new clusters compared to control and schizotypal groups but took longer to transition between words within clusters. Findings of altered local exploitation and global exploration through semantic memory provide preliminary evidence of aberrant cognitive foraging in schizophrenia.