What makes a good query? Prospects for a comprehensive theory of human information acquisition

Abstract

Searching for information in a goal-directed manner is central for learning, diagnosis, and prediction. Children continuously ask questions to learn new concepts, doctors do medical tests to diagnose their patients, and scientists perform experiments to test their theories. But what makes a good question? What principles govern human information acquisition and how do people decide which query to conduct to achieve their goals? What challenges need to be met to advance theory and psychology of human inquiry? Addressing these issues, we introduce the conceptual and mathematical ideas underlying different models of the value of information, what purpose these models serve in psychological research, and how they can be integrated in a unified formal framework. We also discuss the conflict between short- and long-term efficiency of prominent methods for query selection, and the resulting normative and methodological implications for studying human sequential search. A final point of discussion concerns the relations between probabilistic (Bayesian) models of the value of information and heuristic search strategies, and the insights than can be gained from bridging different levels of analysis and types of models. We conclude by discussing open questions and challenges that research needs to address to build a comprehensive theory of human information acquisition.

Information foraging with an oracle

“…Taken together, the two studies show that peoples' preference for expert (oracle) advice is evident both when it conveys economic value (i.e., increases economic payoff) as well as epistemic value (i.e., it reduces payoff variance and choice uncertainty). Both reward maximization and uncertainty reduction are key determinants of choice in theories of bounded rational decision-making that take information costs into consideration [27][28][29][30]38] and here we show that they can be in play (simultaneously) even during exploration-exploitation scenarios that involve external sources of evidence. Note that the first experiment shows a general under-use of expert advice across conditions, whereas the second experiment shows a general preference for expert advice in ambiguous conditions.…”

The Likelihood Difference Heuristic and Binary Test Selection Given Situation-Specific Utilities

“…Early research on how humans intuitively select queries was inspired by Popper's (1959) philosophy of science and the idea that one should seek out potentially disconfirming evidence (Wason, 1960(Wason, , 1968). More recent approaches conceptualize human query selection as probabilistic inductive inference, where the goal is not to obtain potentially disconfirming information for a single hypothesis, but rather to acquire information in order to discriminate among multiple hypotheses (Coenen et al, 2019;Crupi et al, 2018;Meder et al, 2021). This approach, sometimes referred to as the Optimal Experimental Design (OED) framework, has theoretical roots in Chamberlin's (1890) Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses, with instantiations in information theory (Shannon, 1948;Lindley, 1956), Bayesian philosophy of science (Good, 1950), and automatic Bayesian experiment design (Myung & Pitt, 2009).…”

Disrupting optimal decision making in visual foraging: The impact of search experience.

“…For example, Hills et al (2010) proposed that the central executive function can be considered as a search process which involves the trade-off between exploration and exploitation. Moreover, this expanded perspective recognizes that behaviors not traditionally categorized as search, such as the multiarmed bandit problem (Giron et al, 2022;Wu et al, 2018) and information search in physical and online environments (Meder et al, 2022;Pirolli & Card, 1999), can be reframed and understood as instances of searching. These insights highlight the profound influence of search processes on our cognition and behavior, offering a compelling framework for understanding and integrating these diverse behaviors within the field of cognitive psychology.…”