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Poster F in Poster Session F: Thursday, August 6, 1:45 – 3:30 pm, Kimmel Center, Shorin & Rosenthal Rooms

Hierarchical Organization of Actions in Creative Problem Solving: Evidence from the Puzzle Game Baba Is You

Yang-Fan Lu¹, Xu-Yang Zhang¹, Zhihua Zhu², Qianli Yang², Hang Zhang¹; ¹Peking University, ²Chinese Academy of Sciences

Presenter: Xu-Yang Zhang

Real-world problem-solving requires creatively redefining constraints, a process captured by the rule-dynamic puzzle Baba Is You. However, modeling human strategies in such open-ended environments faces significant computational challenges: state-action space explosion, researcher bias in "top-down" operator definitions, and the non-Markovian nature of latent subgoals. Here, we develop an objective, bottom-up framework to identify atomic operators (OPs) and cluster them into Functional Units (FUs), aligning with evidence that humans construct simplified mental representations to plan. Applying a 4-state Hidden Markov Model(HMM) on inter-move reaction times (RTs), we dissociate latent states of intensive deliberation to quantify planning depth. Analyzing 1.2 million actions from 1,118 participants, we show that deliberation peaks during low-motor-load navigation and at the starting point of complex subgoals. This temporal gap widens at higher levels of the abstraction hierarchy (OP → FU), suggesting a strategic front-loading of computational resources. Furthermore, significant shifts in operator distributions post-failure indicate that restarts trigger global re-evaluations of internal models. Our findings provide a data-driven account of how humans optimize hierarchical planning to navigate and restructure causal logic.

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