Random Walks on Semantic Networks Can Resemble Optimal Foraging

When people are asked to retrieve members of a category from memory, clusters of semantically related items tend to be retrieved together. A recent article by Hills, Jones, and Todd (2012) argued that this pattern reflects a process similar to optimal strategies for foraging for food in patchy spati...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychological review 2015-07, Vol.122 (3), p.558-569
Main Authors: Abbott, Joshua T., Austerweil, Joseph L., Griffiths, Thomas L.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Appetitive Behavior - physiology
Classification (Cognitive Process)
Cluster analysis
Cognitive psychology
Decision
Female
Humans
Information
Information processing
Male
Memory
Mental Recall - physiology
Models, Psychological
Psychological Theory
Recall
Semantic Memory
Semantic Networks
Semantics
Spatial analysis
Verbal Fluency
Citations: Items that cite this one
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Summary:When people are asked to retrieve members of a category from memory, clusters of semantically related items tend to be retrieved together. A recent article by Hills, Jones, and Todd (2012) argued that this pattern reflects a process similar to optimal strategies for foraging for food in patchy spatial environments, with an individual making a strategic decision to switch away from a cluster of related information as it becomes depleted. We demonstrate that similar behavioral phenomena also emerge from a random walk on a semantic network derived from human word-association data. Random walks provide an alternative account of how people search their memories, postulating an undirected rather than a strategic search process. We show that results resembling optimal foraging are produced by random walks when related items are close together in the semantic network. These findings are reminiscent of arguments from the debate on mental imagery, showing how different processes can produce similar results when operating on different representations.
ISSN:0033-295X
1939-1471
DOI:10.1037/a0038693