Howes Andrew, Lewis Richard L, Vera Alonso
Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, United Kingdom.
Psychol Rev. 2009 Oct;116(4):717-51. doi: 10.1037/a0017187.
The authors assume that individuals adapt rationally to a utility function given constraints imposed by their cognitive architecture and the local task environment. This assumption underlies a new approach to modeling and understanding cognition-cognitively bounded rational analysis-that sharpens the predictive acuity of general, integrated theories of cognition and action. Such theories provide the necessary computational means to explain the flexible nature of human behavior but in doing so introduce extreme degrees of freedom in accounting for data. The new approach narrows the space of predicted behaviors through analysis of the payoff achieved by alternative strategies, rather than through fitting strategies and theoretical parameters to data. It extends and complements established approaches, including computational cognitive architectures, rational analysis, optimal motor control, bounded rationality, and signal detection theory. The authors illustrate the approach with a reanalysis of an existing account of psychological refractory period (PRP) dual-task performance and the development and analysis of a new theory of ordered dual-task responses. These analyses yield several novel results, including a new understanding of the role of strategic variation in existing accounts of PRP and the first predictive, quantitative account showing how the details of ordered dual-task phenomena emerge from the rational control of a cognitive system subject to the combined constraints of internal variance, motor interference, and a response selection bottleneck.
作者假定，个体在其认知结构和局部任务环境所施加的限制条件下，会理性地适应一个效用函数。这一假设构成了一种建模和理解认知的新方法——认知有限理性分析的基础，该方法提高了关于认知与行动的一般综合理论的预测敏锐度。此类理论提供了解释人类行为灵活性所需的计算手段，但这样做在解释数据时引入了极大的自由度。新方法通过分析替代策略所获得的收益来缩小预测行为的空间，而不是通过将策略和理论参数拟合到数据上。它扩展并补充了已有的方法，包括计算认知架构、理性分析、最优运动控制、有限理性和信号检测理论。作者通过对心理不应期（PRP）双任务表现的现有解释进行重新分析，以及对有序双任务反应新理论的发展与分析，来说明该方法。这些分析得出了几个新颖的结果，包括对PRP现有解释中策略变化作用的新理解，以及第一个预测性的定量解释，展示了有序双任务现象的细节是如何从一个受内部方差、运动干扰和反应选择瓶颈等综合限制的认知系统的理性控制中产生的。
