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Poster B in Poster Session B: Tuesday, August 4, 2:00 – 3:45 pm, Kimmel Center, Shorin & Rosenthal Rooms

How losses change the way we search: valence effects on generalization-guided exploration

Ingrid Martin¹, Charley M Wu², Toby Wise¹; ¹King's College London, ²Technische Universität Darmstadt

Presenter: Ingrid Martin

Gaussian Process (GP) regression models capture how individuals balance exploration and exploitation by generalizing from rewarding experiences to guide search. However, it remains unclear whether people generalize similarly from losses, and how the presence of losses might alter exploration strategy. Across two pilot studies, participants completed 24 blocks (8 per valence) of a valenced spatially correlated bandit task. Reward values were either all positive, all negative, or mixed, with valence manipulated within subjects across blocks. Distances between sequential clicks were greater in negative and mixed conditions than positive and local search was less frequent. These effects replicated across studies and were not associated with differences in performance, suggesting the framing of losses alters the spatial structure of search rather than its breadth or effectiveness. Preliminary modelling extends GP-UCB models to investigate whether the observed behavioural differences are better explained by asymmetric weighting of negative versus positive outcomes, or by shifts in the prior mean over expected rewards, whereby people hold more optimistic expectations for unobserved options in loss environments.

Topic Area: Decision-Making, Cognitive Control & Event Cognition