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Noise in cognition : bug or feature?
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Sanborn, Adam N., Zhu, Jian-Qiao, Spicer, Jake, León-Villagrá, Pablo, Castillo, Lucas, Falbén, Johanna K., Li, Yun-Xiao, Tee, Aidan and Chater, Nick (2024) Noise in cognition : bug or feature? Perspectives on Psychological Science . ISSN 1745-6916. (In Press)
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Abstract
Noise in behavior is often viewed as a nuisance: while the mind aims to take the best possible action, it is let down by unreliability in the sensory and response systems. How researchers study cognition reflects this viewpoint – averaging over trials and participants to discover the deterministic relationships between experimental manipulations and their behavioral consequences, with noise represented as additive, often Gaussian, and independent. Yet a careful look at behavioral noise reveals rich structure that defies easy explanation. First, both perceptual and preferential judgments show that sensory and response noise may potentially only play minor roles, with most noise arising in the cognitive computations. Second, the functional form of the noise is both non-Gaussian and non-independent, with the distribution of noise being better characterized as heavy-tailed and as having substantial long-range autocorrelations. It is possible that this structure results from brains that are, for some reason, bedeviled by a fundamental design flaw, albeit one with intriguingly distinctive characteristics. Alternatively, noise might not be a bug but a feature: indeed, we suggest that noise is fundamental to how cognition works. Specifically, we propose that the brain approximates probabilistic inference with a local sampling algorithm, one that uses randomness to drive its exploration of alternative hypotheses. Reframing cognition in this way explains the rich structure of noise and leads to a surprising conclusion: that noise is not a symptom of cognitive malfunction but plays a central role in underpinning human intelligence.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||
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Subjects: | B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BD Speculative Philosophy B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology Q Science > QH Natural history |
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Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Warwick Business School > Behavioural Science Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Science > Psychology Faculty of Social Sciences > Warwick Business School |
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Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Noise , Noise -- Psychological aspects, Human beings -- Effect of noise on, Human behavior, Cognitive psychology | ||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Perspectives on Psychological Science | ||||||
Publisher: | Sage Publications Inc. | ||||||
ISSN: | 1745-6916 | ||||||
Official Date: | 2024 | ||||||
Dates: |
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Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
Publication Status: | In Press | ||||||
Re-use Statement: | Posted ahead of print. Sanborn, Adam N., Zhu, Jian-Qiao, Spicer, Jake, León-Villagrá, Pablo, Castillo, Lucas, Falbén, Johanna K., Li, Yun-Xiao, Tee, Aidan and Chater, Nick (2024) Noise in cognition : bug or feature? Perspectives on Psychological Science . ISSN 1745-6916 © 2024 Sage Publications. Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications. https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/journal/perspectives-psychological-science#description Users who receive access to an article through a repository are reminded that the article is protected by copyright and reuse is restricted to non-commercial and no derivative uses. | ||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 9 May 2024 | ||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 10 May 2024 | ||||||
RIOXX Funder/Project Grant: |
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