Research Project
Full description Faced with uncertainty, decision-makers can forage for information about their environment by strategically exploring and exploiting sources of information. In this experiment, we investigated how foragers form beliefs and make decisions under uncertainty. Behavioural and eye tracking data were collected for 80 participants as they engaged in a visual information foraging task. Participants explored two patches of moving dots in the visual periphery by fixating them in turn. Brief coherent motion signals were presented in each patch at random intervals. Participants judged which patch had a higher rate of signals, on average. We modelled the participants' beliefs about signal rates as probability distributions using iterative Bayesian belief updating. The findings of this project suggest that accumulation of belief certainty informs decision-making in foraging for visual information.