Exploration strategies in human decision making

The tradeoff between pursuing a known reward (exploitation) and sampling unknown, potentially better opportunities (exploration) is a fundamental challenge faced by all adaptive organisms. Theories formalize the value of exploration (gathering information) as an information bonus. However, this may be difficult to compute; a simpler alternative is to increase decision noise, driving random exploration. Relatively few studies have characterized human exploratory behavior, and most have failed to find an information bonus, suggesting it relies entirely on random exploration. However, these previous studies have either confounded reward and information or failed to account for baseline levels ambiguity aversion and decision noise. To overcome these limitations, we conducted a sequential choice task that independently manipulated reward, information, and number of choices. Contrary to previous work, we found that humans do show an information bonus when given the opportunity to explore. In addition we found adaptive changes in decision noise consistent with a type of random exploration that is subject to cognitive control.