Expecting the unexpected: how people prioritise predictability

这个项目旨在调查人们如何在他们的环境中表现和使用关于不可预测性的信息。看到太多的可预测性是有问题的，但看到太少也可能是一个问题，例如，可能会出现不适当的“习得性无助感”，即人们因为世界被视为随机而感到被剥夺了权力。最近的研究结果表明，在基础学习中存在一种偏见，这种偏见可能会维持这些关于不可预测性的不适当信念。正式的学习理论没有预料到这种偏见。该项目将通过首先形式化一种新的基础学习理论，然后系统地测试其假设，来研究这种偏见是如何产生的。

This project aims to investigate how people represent and use information about unpredictability in their environment. Seeing too much predictability is problematic, but seeing too little can also be a problem, for example inappropriate "learned helplessness" can occur, whereby people feel disempowered because the world is seen as random. Recent findings demonstrated a bias in fundamental learning that may maintain these inappropriate beliefs about unpredictability. This bias is not anticipated by formal theories of learning. The project will investigate how this bias is brought about by first formalising a novel theory of fundamental learning and then systematically testing its assumptions.