Department of Psychology and Center for Brain Science, Harvard University, MA, Cambridge, USA.
Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci. 2023 Jun;23(3):465-475. doi: 10.3758/s13415-022-01034-8. Epub 2022 Sep 27.
Can you reduce uncertainty by thinking? Intuition suggests that this happens through the elusive process of attention: if we expend mental effort, we can increase the reliability of our sensory data. Models based on "rational inattention" formalize this idea in terms of a trade-off between the costs and benefits of attention. This paper surveys the origin of these models in economics, their connection to rate-distortion theory, and some of their recent applications to psychology and neuroscience. We also report new data from a numerosity judgment task in which we manipulate performance incentives. Consistent with rational inattention, people are able to improve performance on this task when incentivized, in part by increasing the reliability of their sensory data.
思考能否减少不确定性？直觉表明，这种情况是通过注意力这一难以捉摸的过程实现的：如果我们投入精力，就可以提高感官数据的可靠性。基于“理性忽视”的模型从注意力的成本和收益权衡的角度对这一观点进行了形式化。本文综述了这些模型在经济学中的起源、与率失真理论的联系，以及它们在心理学和神经科学中的一些最新应用。我们还报告了一项数量判断任务的新数据，该任务中我们操纵了绩效激励。与理性忽视一致，当人们受到激励时，他们能够提高这项任务的表现，部分原因是提高了感官数据的可靠性。
