Abstract
Bayesian models of cognition provide a powerful way to understand the behavior and goals of individuals from a computational point of view. Much of the focus in the Bayesian cognitive modeling approach has been on qualitative model evaluations, where predictions from the models are compared to data that is often averaged over individuals. In many cognitive tasks, however, there are pervasive individual differences. We introduce an approach to directly infer individual differences related to subjective mental representations within the framework of Bayesian models of cognition. In this approach, Bayesian data analysis methods are used to estimate cognitive parameters and motivate the inference process within a Bayesian cognitive model. We illustrate this integrative Bayesian approach on a model of memory. We apply the model to behavioral data from a memory experiment involving the recall of heights of people. A cross-validation analysis shows that the Bayesian memory model with inferred subjective priors predicts withheld data better than a Bayesian model where the priors are based on environmental statistics. In addition, the model with inferred priors at the individual subject level led to the best overall generalization performance, suggesting that individual differences are important to consider in Bayesian models of cognition.
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Notes
From now on, we will refer to observed variables as known variables to avoid confusion with the term observer.
We can also extend the approach and assume that multiple samples are stored depending on the amount of study time. Since study time is not a relevant factor in the current experimental approach, we have restricted the model to a single sample.
The results show that the intercept for female was smaller than that for male. This difference in intercepts by relative study size supports the prediction of gender-level prior effects. A one-way ANOVA with two levels (female, male) found a significant effect of category [F (1, 42) = 25.83, p < .001].
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Hemmer, P., Tauber, S. & Steyvers, M. Moving beyond qualitative evaluations of Bayesian models of cognition. Psychon Bull Rev 22, 614–628 (2015). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-014-0725-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-014-0725-z