The Cost of Structure Learning
The Cost of Structure Learning
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DOI：
10.1162/jocn_a_01128
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发表时间：
2017-10-01
影响因子：
3.2
通讯作者：
Collins, Anne G. E.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Collins, Anne G. E.
人类的学习是高效且灵活的。这种学习灵活性的一个关键贡献者是我们能够在我们知道需要相同行为的上下文中概括新信息，并将规则转移到我们遇到的新上下文中。为此，我们构建所学到的信息，并将其分层表示为抽象的、依赖于上下文的规则，这些规则限制了较低级别的刺激-行动-结果意外事件。先前的研究表明，即使不需要，人类也会创建这种结构，大概是因为它通常能带来长期的泛化效益。然而，计算模型预测创建结构成本高昂，学习速度较慢，RT 也较慢。我们在一项新的行为实验中测试了这一预测。参与者学会在提供（但不促进）结构学习或强制非层次学习的环境中为四种视觉模式选择正确的动作，同时控制学习问题的难度。结果重复了我们之前的发现，即健康的年轻人即使在不需要的时候也会创造结构，并且这种结构可以在以后进行推广。此外，他们支持我们的预测，即结构学习会产生主要的学习成本，并且这种成本与选择抽象规则的努力特别相关，从而导致应用这些规则时出现更多错误。这些发现证实了我们的理论，即人类在学习结构上付出了高昂的短期成本，才能在学习灵活性方面获得长期利益。
Human learning is highly efficient and flexible. A key contributor to this learning flexibility is our ability to generalize new information across contexts that we know require the same behavior and to transfer rules to new contexts we encounter. To do this, we structure the information we learn and represent it hierarchically as abstract, context-dependent rules that constrain lower-level stimulus-action-outcome contingencies. Previous research showed that humans create such structure even when it is not needed, presumably because it usually affords long-term generalization benefits. However, computational models predict that creating structure is costly, with slower learning and slower RTs. We tested this prediction in a new behavioral experiment. Participants learned to select correct actions for four visual patterns, in a setting that either afforded (but did not promote) structure learning or enforced nonhierarchical learning, while controlling for the difficulty of the learning problem. Results replicated our previous finding that healthy young adults create structure even when unneeded and that this structure affords later generalization. Furthermore, they supported our prediction that structure learning incurred a major learning cost and that this cost was specifically tied to the effort in selecting abstract rules, leading to more errors when applying those rules. These findings confirm our theory that humans pay a high short-term cost in learning structure to enable longer-term benefits in learning flexibility.