Abstract
It has been unclear whether optimal experimental design accounts of data selection may offer insight into evidence acquisition tasks in which the learner's beliefs change greatly during the course of learning. Data from Rehder and Hoffman's (2003, 2005) eye movement version of Shepard, Hovland, and Jenkins's (1961) classic concept learning task provide an opportunity to address these issues. We introduce a principled probabilistic concept-learning model that describes the development of subjects' beliefs on that task. We use that learning model, together with a sampling function inspired by theory of optimal experimental design, to predict subjects' eye movements on the active learning version of that task. Results show that the same rational sampling function can predict eye movements early in learning, when uncertainty is high, as well as late in learning when the learner is certain of the true category. Several issues for future work, and the relationship of eye movement to non-eye movement means of information acquisition, are discussed.
Bob Rehder and Aaron Hoffman kindly corresponded about their experiment and findings, and provided their data to us. Bob Rehder, Javier Movellan, Michael Lee, Tim Marks, Flavia Filimon, provided helpful ideas in relation to this work. JDN was funded by NIMH grant 5T32MH020002-05 and by NSF grant DGE 0333451. GWC is supported by NIH grant MH57075.