"Common underlying search mechanisms may exist that drive our behavior in many different domains," said IU cognitive scientist Peter Todd. "If how people search in space is similar to how they search in their minds, it's a very exciting prospect to try to find the deep, underlying roots of human behavior that may be common to varied domains."
Lead author Thomas Hills worked with Todd and fellow IU cognitive scientist Robert Goldstone in designing experiments to explore the search processes their study participants used in both spatial and abstract settings. The studies revolved around two search modes -- exploitation, where seekers stay with a place or task until they have gotten appreciable benefit from it, and exploration, where seekers move quickly from one place or one task to another, looking for a new set of resources to exploit. They then examined whether an initial search, in this case for resources in space, primed the mode used in the subsequent, more abstract search.
"We asked the question -- are the same mechanisms that let simpler organisms search in space for food related to how we search for things in our mind, for concepts or ideas," Todd said. "Our conclusion is that they seem to be linked at some level, which is what our priming experiment suggests."
Some people might be more inclined to one search mode or the other, having a lesser ability to focus on a given task or difficulty letting go of an idea. An extreme form of the exploratory cognitive style would be someone with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. An extreme form of the exploitive cognitive style would be someone with obsessive compulsive disorder.
These new findings, published in the latest issue of Psychological Science, have possible implications related to other recent work on brain chemistry and cognitive disorders. Exploratory foraging -- actual or abstract -- appears to be linked to decreases in the brain chemical dopamine. Many problems related to attention -- including ADHD, drug addiction, some forms of autism and schizophrenia -- have been linked to such a dopamine deficit. The authors suggest that computer foraging, such as that used for their experiments, could reveal individual differences in underlying cognitive search style, and could even be used to manipulate that style. If that were possible, it could perhaps lead to therapies for such cognitive disorders.
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