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Observed reaching speed signals stimulus value and informs foraging
Title / Series / Name
Publication Volume
Publication Issue
Pages
Editors
Keywords
Action understanding
Foraging
Kinematics
Social learning
Signaling
Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Language and Linguistics
Developmental and Educational Psychology
Linguistics and Language
Cognitive Neuroscience
Foraging
Kinematics
Social learning
Signaling
Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Language and Linguistics
Developmental and Educational Psychology
Linguistics and Language
Cognitive Neuroscience
URI
https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14018/27703
Abstract
Optimal foraging requires agents to strike a balance between potential costs and rewards of interacting with stimuli in the environment. Research on human and animal foraging shows that the value an agent assigns to a stimulus is correlated with the speed of their reaching movement towards that stimulus (Shadmehr et al., 2019). Humans and other animals learn about the value of stimuli in their environment by observing others acting (Pyke, 1984; Boyd, Richerson & Henrich, 2011). Considering that humans are able to derive specific mental states such as intentions, emotions or confidence from specific movement parameters (Becchio et al., 2012), we aimed to investigate whether observers can use an actor's movement speed to: 1) infer the value of a foraging stimulus; and 2) use such cues to inform their own foraging behavior. The current study first replicated the effect of stimulus value on reaching movements in a novel foraging task (Exp. 1, N = 34). In three further experiments, we demonstrate that, depending on the speed by which an actor reaches for stimuli, observers infer the value of these stimuli (Exp. 2, N = 54), express foraging preferences (Exp. 3, N = 54), and invest time and effort to forage (Exp. 4, N = 105). This demonstrates that observers optimize their own explore-exploit decisions by inferring the value of a stimulus from the manner by which an actor approaches it, highlighting the fundamental role that action understanding plays in successful foraging.
Topic
Publisher
Place of Publication
Type
Journal article
Date
2025-08
Language
ISBN
Identifiers
10.1016/j.cognition.2025.106148