Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: To reconcile previously reported differences in information-seeking behaviour displayed by neurodivergent children and their neurotypical peers, Jones et al. (2024) present a compelling new theory of rational information-seeking behaviour. The central premise of rational inattention is that optimal information-seeking behaviour may centre around learning to disengage from imprecise sources, that is, sources where information gain is expected to be low and imprecise. Thus, children with dyslexia may, over time, selectively disengage from further processing of text, which past experience has taught them provides minimal information gain. Neurotypical children who have experienced greater information gain from text sources, however, may persevere and attend to such sources proportionately in the future. Rational inattention has critical bridges to previous rational accounts of curiosity, where the rational agent aims to maximise information gain by attending to sources that maximally increase the usefulness of their knowledge (e.g., Dubey and Griffiths 2020). These links to previous accounts of curiosity are worth considering in greater detail towards a unified account of information-seeking behaviour. In particular, in reconciling these accounts, one question worth pursuing is the relationship between rational attention—as characterised by rational accounts of curiosity—and rational inattention. Is rational attention the flip side of rational inattention or are different factors likely to impact the sources children choose to attend to in the search for information gain and the sources children disengage from over time. My suspicion is that at least a partial answer to this question may lie in paying closer attention (pun unintended) to two timescales of rational inattention, in particular, the real-time and the developmental timescale of rational inattention (cf. McMurray 2016). Let us first consider the timescale of real-time processing in the proposed model. The model suggests that some reconstruction of the input is produced regardless of the precision of this reconstruction in the initial stages of processing (see Figure 1). Thus, even input that is later evaluated as imprecise is included in the early processing stages. The error between the input and the imprecise reconstruction is downweighted, retrospectively, based on the learner's experience with such stimuli (e.g., see Schütte, Mani, and Behne 2020, for evidence of such retrospective selective learning in young children). This is where rational inattention comes in. Indeed, the early reconstruction of all input is the reason why a clamped model—without such retrospective downweighting—shows improved learning from even imprecise input. Here, rational attention and rational inattention may be seen as flip sides of the same coin with the input being retrospectively weighted in essentially the same way to allow attention to sources that ensure information gain and away from sources that are unlikely to minimise uncertainty. Such an interpretation would allow for a unified framework for information seeking, bringing together the benefits of rational accounts of curiosity—in terms of estimating the future usefulness of encountered information—and the neurodivergent perspective offered by rational inattention.
Source: Developmental Science
DOI: 10.1111/desc.13571
Author: Nivedita Mani
Language: English
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $4,020
Funder: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
OpenAlex ID: W4403217358