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Uncertainty often has a negative connotation. It implies some mismatch between how the world is operating and our ability to predict it. But for a learner, uncertainty is like a lighthouse pointing the way, signaling that there’s something worth learning about. Uncertainty can therefore be the link between action and learning.
My research centers on this interplay between uncertainty and action: how people make use of their uncertainty in order to decide how to learn about the world.
- how is uncertainty represented by the mind?
- how do people generate and test hypotheses about their environment?
- how does active control of learning differ from passive conditions in which control is absent?
- how do people balance the value of exploration against its costs?
See below for summaries of some ongoing projects, or the list of publications.
How does knowledge about possible states of the world guide the search for information?
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In this project, we examined exploration in a task similar to the board game Battleship. In this game, players were shown an empty grid and told that three shapes were hidden inside. These shapes were randomly sampled from a predefined set. By clicking on a square in the grid, they could learn whether a square in the grid belonged to a shape or was empty. Their goal was to simply learn the hidden configuration of shapes by uncovering the fewest squares as possible.
How do people transform their knowledge about the hypothesis space (i.e., different possible configurations of shapes from the original set) into decisions about which squares to uncover? We developed an “ideal searcher model” that quantifies the amount of uncertainty reduction expected from uncovering different locations (see example below). The model shows how uncertainty changes over the course of learning--a location that is highly useful on one trial may suddenly become redundant on the next.
{:refdef: .selectedpubs} Related publications:
- Markant, D. and Gureckis, T.M. (2014). "A preference for the unpredictable over the informative during self-directed learning." in P. Bello, M. Guarini, M. McShane, and B. Scassellati (Eds.) Proceedings of the 36th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. [bibtex]
- Markant, D. and Gureckis, T.M. (2012). "Does the utility of information influence sampling behavior?" in Miyake, N. and Peebles, D. and Cooper, R.P. (Eds), Proceedings of the 34th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 719—724). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. [bibtex]
- Gureckis, T.M. and Markant, D. (2009) "Active learning strategies in a spatial concept learning game" in Taatgen, N., van Rijn, H., Schomaker, L. and Nerbonne, J. (Eds), Proceedings of the 31st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 3145—3150). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.
[bibtex]
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{:refdef: .selectedpubs} Selected publications:
- Markant, D. (2016, in press). “The impact of biased hypothesis generation on self-directed learning.” In Papafragou, A., Grodner, D., Mirman, D., and Trueswell, J. (Eds.) Proceedings of the 38th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.
- Markant, D., Settles, B., and Gureckis, T.M. (2016). "Self-directed learning favors local, rather than global, uncertainty." Cognitive Science 40(1), 100—120. doi: 10.1111/cogs.12220
- Markant, D. and Gureckis, T.M. (2014). "Is it better to select or receive? Learning via active and passive hypothesis testing." Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 143(1), 94—122. [bibtex] {:refdef}
{:refdef: .selectedpubs} Selected publications:
- Markant, D., Ruggeri, A., Gureckis, T. M., and Xu, F. (2016, in press). “Enhanced memory as a common effect of active learning.” Mind, Brain, and Education.
- Ruggeri, A., Markant, D., Gureckis, T. M., and Xu, F. (2016, in press). Active control of study leads to improved recognition memory in children.” In Papafragou, A., Grodner, D., Mirman, D., and Trueswell, J. (Eds.) Proceedings of the 38th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.
- Markant, D., Dubrow, S., Davachi, L., and Gureckis, T.M. (2014). "Deconstructing the effect of self-directed study on episodic memory." Memory & Cognition 42(8), 1211—1224. doi: 10.3758/s13421-014-0435-9 [bibtex] {:refdef}
{:refdef: .selectedpubs} Selected publications:
- Markant, D., Pleskac, T.J., Diederich, A., Pachur, T., and Hertwig, R. (2015). "Modeling choice and search in decisions from experience: A sequential sampling approach." In Dale., R., Jennings, C., Maglio, P., Matlock, T., Noelle, D., Warlaumont, A., Yoshimi, J. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 37th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. [bibtex] {:refdef}