Department of Psychology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel.
Department of Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel.
Nat Hum Behav. 2024 Sep;8(9):1726-1737. doi: 10.1038/s41562-024-01930-8. Epub 2024 Jul 16.
The formation of predictions is essential to our ability to build models of the world and use them for intelligent decision-making. Here we challenge the dominant assumption that humans form only forward predictions, which specify what future events are likely to follow a given present event. We demonstrate that in some environments, it is more efficient to use backward prediction, which specifies what present events are likely to precede a given future event. This is particularly the case in diverging environments, where possible future events outnumber possible present events. Correspondingly, in six preregistered experiments (n = 1,299) involving both simple decision-making and more challenging planning tasks, we find that humans engage in backward prediction in divergent environments and use forward prediction in convergent environments. We thus establish that humans adaptively deploy forward and backward prediction in the service of efficient decision-making.
预测的形成对于我们构建世界模型并将其用于智能决策的能力至关重要。在这里，我们挑战了一个主导假设，即人类仅形成向前预测，这些预测指定给定当前事件之后可能会发生哪些未来事件。我们证明，在某些环境中，使用向后预测（指定给定未来事件之前可能会发生哪些当前事件）更有效。在发散环境中尤其如此，在这种环境中，可能的未来事件比可能的当前事件多。相应地，在六个预先注册的实验（n=1299）中，涉及简单的决策制定和更具挑战性的规划任务，我们发现人类在发散环境中进行向后预测，而在收敛环境中进行向前预测。因此，我们确定人类会自适应地部署向前预测和向后预测，以实现高效的决策制定。
