TY - JOUR
T1 - A rational reinterpretation of dual-process theories
AU - Milli, Smitha
AU - Lieder, Falk
AU - Griffiths, Thomas L.
N1 - Funding Information:
A preliminary version of Simulations 1 and 2 was presented at the Thirty-First AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and appeared in the proceedings of that conference ( Milli, Lieder, & Griffiths, 2017 ). The work presented in this article was supported by grant number ONR MURI N00014-13-1-0341 and a grant from the Future of Life Institute .
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2021/12
Y1 - 2021/12
N2 - Highly influential “dual-process” accounts of human cognition postulate the coexistence of a slow accurate system with a fast error-prone system. But why would there be just two systems rather than, say, one or 93? Here, we argue that a dual-process architecture might reflect a rational tradeoff between the cognitive flexibility afforded by multiple systems and the time and effort required to choose between them. We investigate what the optimal set and number of cognitive systems would be depending on the structure of the environment. We find that the optimal number of systems depends on the variability of the environment and the difficulty of deciding when which system should be used. Furthermore, we find that there is a plausible range of conditions under which it is optimal to be equipped with a fast system that performs no deliberation (“System 1”) and a slow system that achieves a higher expected accuracy through deliberation (“System 2”). Our findings thereby suggest a rational reinterpretation of dual-process theories.
AB - Highly influential “dual-process” accounts of human cognition postulate the coexistence of a slow accurate system with a fast error-prone system. But why would there be just two systems rather than, say, one or 93? Here, we argue that a dual-process architecture might reflect a rational tradeoff between the cognitive flexibility afforded by multiple systems and the time and effort required to choose between them. We investigate what the optimal set and number of cognitive systems would be depending on the structure of the environment. We find that the optimal number of systems depends on the variability of the environment and the difficulty of deciding when which system should be used. Furthermore, we find that there is a plausible range of conditions under which it is optimal to be equipped with a fast system that performs no deliberation (“System 1”) and a slow system that achieves a higher expected accuracy through deliberation (“System 2”). Our findings thereby suggest a rational reinterpretation of dual-process theories.
KW - Bounded optimality
KW - Bounded rationality
KW - Dual-process theories
KW - Meta-decision making
KW - Metareasoning
KW - Resource-rationality
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U2 - 10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104881
DO - 10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104881
M3 - Article
C2 - 34536658
AN - SCOPUS:85114930269
SN - 0010-0277
VL - 217
JO - Cognition
JF - Cognition
M1 - 104881
ER -