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Poster Session A: Tuesday, August 12, 1:30 – 4:30 pm, de Brug & E‑Hall

Learning task rule updating strategies requires extensive practice

Shengjie Xu¹, Tanya Wen, Tobias Egner, Tom Verguts¹, Senne Braem¹; ¹Universiteit Gent

Presenter: Shengjie Xu

People can adjust how fast they update task rules, depending on the volatility of their environment. We investigated whether this adaptivity is primarily driven by recently experienced volatility in task demands, or can also be shaped by learned, environment-specific associations with expected levels of volatility. We trained participants on a Wisconsin Card Sorting Task where different environments required different speeds of task rule updating. Initially, participants updated strategies depending on the most recently experienced levels of volatility (Experiment 1). However, after extensive (four days) training (Experiment 2), participants also developed environment-specific associations. Our findings provide important insights in how people learn to regulate cognitive flexibility.

Topic Area: Memory, Spatial Cognition & Skill Learning

Extended Abstract: Full Text PDF