Cognitive costs of decision-making strategies: A resource demand decomposition analysis with a cognitive architecture

摘要

Highlights?We decompose the cognitive effort of decision strategies using ACT-R.?Our approach determines the strategies’ time costs for using cognitive resources.?We compare the costs of the decision strategies take-the-best and tallying.?In our simulations and study, take-the-best was sometimes more costly than tallying.?This is due to costs of working memory updates, retrievals, and action coordination.AbstractSeveral theories of cognition distinguish between strategies that differ in the mental effort that their use requires. But how can the effort—or cognitive costs—associated with a strategy be conceptualized and measured? We propose an approach that decomposes the effort a strategy requires into the time costs associated with the demands for using specific cognitive resources. We refer to this approach as<