Predicting change: Approximate inference under explicit representation of temporal structure in changing environments

PLoS Comput Biol. 2019 Jan 31;15(1):e1006707. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006707. eCollection 2019 Jan.

Abstract

In our daily lives timing of our actions plays an essential role when we navigate the complex everyday environment. It is an open question though how the representations of the temporal structure of the world influence our behavior. Here we propose a probabilistic model with an explicit representation of state durations which may provide novel insights in how the brain predicts upcoming changes. We illustrate several properties of the behavioral model using a standard reversal learning design and compare its task performance to standard reinforcement learning models. Furthermore, using experimental data, we demonstrate how the model can be applied to identify participants' beliefs about the latent temporal task structure. We found that roughly one quarter of participants seem to have learned the latent temporal structure and used it to anticipate changes, whereas the remaining participants' behavior did not show signs of anticipatory responses, suggesting a lack of precise temporal expectations. We expect that the introduced behavioral model will allow, in future studies, for a systematic investigation of how participants learn the underlying temporal structure of task environments and how these representations shape behavior.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Anticipation, Psychological / physiology
  • Brain / physiology*
  • Computational Biology
  • Databases, Factual
  • Decision Making / physiology*
  • Humans
  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging
  • Models, Psychological*
  • Models, Statistical*
  • Reversal Learning / physiology

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft http://www.dfg.de/ (grant number SFB 940/2, Project A9 (DM and SJK); and Project B7 (AMFR)), and the Open Access Publication Funds of the TU Dresden https://www.slub-dresden.de/service/open-science-service/. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.